


Epic

by nausicaasmith



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Allergies, Dubious Consent, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 05:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4694360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaasmith/pseuds/nausicaasmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Academy Era fic.  Jim's immune system has screwed him over again, but he really hates doctors.  Well, except this one guy.  AKA Title: How Much Abuse Can I Pile on Jim? Mild McKirk if you like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For the first time in his life, James T. Kirk was in a really good place.

A really, really good place.

He was away from Iowa, for one thing. No more wastelands of corn, no picket fences, no eternally dusty dirt roads. No more asshole stepfathers or resentful older brothers or judgmental neighbors. No more concern about when mom was coming in for shore leave, or if she'd even come by the house when she did. No longer his problem. Fucking yay.

Starfleet had taken him without question, for another thing. Even with his record, even with the fact that he'd turned up in San Francisco bruised and hungover from the day before, the name _Kirk_  meant something to the recruiters. He'd been handed a full ride with free tuition, free books, room and meals, a bus card and no questions asked. Jim had spent a lifetime avoiding anything 'fleet related, but Starfleet  _wanted_  Jim, and... it felt good to be wanted, however stupid that sounded.

He had discovered that he had a friend, most importantly. This had been a surprise, given the purposely cocky and borderline antagonistic front that Jim put up when he was in public. It kept him from getting attached, which in turn kept him from being abandoned by those he was attached to, and this had served him well in his short nineteen years. But as Bones had said, you can't puke on a guy in a shuttle and then just walk away.

And true to his word, walk away Bones had not. Yet, anyway. They wound up sharing a small apartment together a block from the Academy, courtesy of Jim's status as a Starfleet orphan. He'd been allowed to request his own roommate, and since he didn't know anyone else the answer was obvious. This worked out well, because in spite of his habit of pushing people away Jim had always held a deep-seated fear of being alone. In exchange, it's kept Bones out of the dorms with all the kids a decade younger and stupider than himself.

When Bones had asked how he'd wound up with his own 'fleet-issued apartment, Jim muttered something vague about his parents careers and changed the subject. He'd gotten into the habit of introducing himself to people as Jim, just Jim, and he suspected (desperately hoped) that Bones hadn't made the connection that his new roommate was the Kelvin Baby himself. If Bones knew, he hadn't brought it up, and that was just fine. People who knew treated him differently at best—at worst they called up the newspapers and tried to sell them embarrassing holos.

Starfleet had taken the position that what the Academy didn't know wouldn't hurt it, and as such no announcement was made to the staff about Jim's presence there. The Admiralty and Christopher Pike knew exactly who he was, of course, but didn't want any disruptions with the student body nor any undue pressure put upon Jim to live up to his father's name. Pike himself was putting exactly that pressure on him, the hypocrite. He meant well, at least. He'd volunteered to be Jim's advisor and emergency contact, and Jim couldn't deny that he was fond of the man. Pike had steered him in the right direction.

And hey, Jim was in a  _really_  good place right now.

Six months in, his GPA was perfect and he hadn't been hospitalized once. He'd skipped a few classes, been in a couple of bar fights, but no arrests and no admittances. Bones had frowned at his bruised face disapprovingly both times, but said nothing. That was the weirdest thing about their friendship: Bones was a doctor, and Jim fucking hated doctors. Self-important, condescending bastards with cold hands who treated you like a five year old. Bones was different somehow, he thought, but the truth was that Jim sincerely hoped never to be in a position to need medical help from him. No reason to ruin what they had going, right?

In six months they'd developed an easy rapport, either chatting or doing homework in comfortable silence in the evenings. They got up every morning at dawn to run a couple miles at Jim's suggestion; he thought the physical exertion would keep himself focused and take the edge off Bones's anxiety in the flight simulators. It seemed to be having an effect, in that he hadn't actually passed out since the third week (although the puking was still a regular occurrence.) After classes they'd have dinner and study on the days that Bones didn't take a shift at the 'Fleet hospital across from the Academy's campus.

On the days Bones did work, like today, Jim was left to his own devices. He usually went to parks or libraries or a coffee shop to study. Preferably coffee shops like this one, on the other side of town from the Academy, where he wouldn't encounter any fellow cadets. He never had gotten along well with his own peer group and he knew it, so he avoided them in favor of adults. Maybe that's why he was drawn to Bones—Bones was an adult, not a just-graduated-from-high-school adult but a real adult with a real education and a real career path.

Reaching the end of his notes, Jim drained his coffee and picked up his books, then dropped a handful of credit chips on the table. It was almost dark, and the next bus would be running momentarily. Maybe when he got back he'd take a nap, and then when Bones came in from work he'd manipulate him into coming out drinking over the weekend if he hadn't already volunteered for a shift at the hospital. Jim knew that medical students had to serve a certain number of hours in the clinic and emergency rooms at Starfleet Medical Center in order to qualify for a permanent posting.

Bones needed some relaxation, and it was almost Christmas break anyway. They could hit a bar or two on Saturday night and get buzzed, maybe take a cab to the holo theater and see if anything good was playing. Bones would be good company and his presence would ensure that Jim didn't get into any trouble. Irrational as it sounded, Jim was reluctant to do anything stupid in front of Bones. He thanked his luckiest stars that so far nothing had caused him to have a panic attack or a humiliating allergic reaction in front of the older man.

Oddly enough, the second that thought crossed his mind he felt the faint ghost of a tingle on his lips.  _Funny how your brain works_ , he thought. The mere thought of his allergies could trigger a phantom reaction. He took a deep breath, shaking it off, and waved his bus pass through the scanner before sitting down. The air was stale inside the crowded bus, and he'd be glad to get back off near the apartment. Maybe he ought to get off before the last stop so he could pick up a couple of pizzas for dinner. Usually Bones came back from his shifts around midnight, dead on his feet, and crashed without bothering to eat anything.

God it was hot on this bus. Yes, getting off a stop ahead and walking by the pizza place would be welcome if for no other reason to get some fresh air. He moved to shift out of his jacket but realized with a minor jolt that it wasn't there. Damn, he must have left it back at the coffee shop. Was it worth turning around and going back? Probably not, it was just a standard gray 'fleet issue thing, easily replaced. And even though it was December the temperature probably was hardly likely to drop below freezing in this part of the country, even if he managed to stay out after dark. Oh well. Jim pressed his lips together in frustration, thinking that Bones would have had something to say about Jim being out in December without a jacket just on general principle...

...when he froze entirely, blue eyes widening in dawning horror. His lips were still tingling, and it wasn't fucking imaginary. In fact his whole mouth was buzzing and it wasn't hot on the  _bus_ , it was just  _Jim_  whose skin was suddenly burning and—his epi-pen had been in his jacket and his jacket was still at the damned coffee shop!

Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Christ, how could he be so stupid? The bus was slowing, and he had to get off at this stop and  _do_  something. What had he eaten in the last half hour? Coffee with sugar and cream, two plain donuts, nothing else since this morning. None of that should have triggered the swelling he could already feel in his face, maybe the barista had given him the wrong coffee, or the donuts had been contaminate by god-knows-what or maybe he'd inhaled something funny and he was reaching for his comm and fuck _fuck,_  it wasn't there because it was in his jacket too and his jacket was at the goddamned coffee shop!

Jim rushed off the stopped bus, stumbling and apologizing to the passengers trying to board, breathing slowly through clenched teeth.  _This is not the time to panic, moron!_  he tells himself. He'd only been on the bus for a couple of minutes, so the coffee shop was only a few blocks away. He could grab a cab and high-tail it to the nearest clinic or hospital, or he could make a mad dash for the coffee shop and his epi-pen. But now his hands were tingling too, and if he made it to the coffee shop would he still be able to hold the pen? But if he got in a cab, how long might he be stuck in traffic before reaching an emergency station?

His feet carried him in the direction of the coffee shop for a block, but he stumbled before he made it to the crosswalk and stopped to lean against a pole because fuck if he was going to trip and fall down in the middle of the street and get run over. Maybe if he wasn't such a dumbass he'd have had his jacket and his pen and he would be fucking fine now, on his way home with pizza. Maybe if he wasn't such a dumbass it would have crossed his mind to ask the bus driver to call an ambulance and he would be fucking fine right now, on his way to the ER. Instead here he was, gasping as his throat began to close, hugging a telephone pole and if he was honest with himself he'd know that it was a miracle that he'd lived this long anyway. Survival of the fittest, right? He'd always known it would get him one day.

After six months of relative calm in his life, this was an epic screw up.  _Haha,_ epi _c, right_? Jim laughed mentally at his own joke, even as he realized that he was about to pass out. As the tunnel vision started to close in and he dropped to his knees on the concrete, Jim found himself wondering idly whether or not Starfleet would let Bones keep the apartment after he was dead.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Leonard H. McCoy had a bad feeling.

Like, a really bad feeling.

Leonard had always put a lot of faith in bad feelings. He had bad feelings a lot, about a variety of things, and most of the time those things turned out to be bad. Therefore, his feelings were accurate enough that he didn't question them often. Call it what, intuition? A sixth sense? A bullshit meter? Whatever it was, it was going off right now, and he didn't like it one damned bit.

He'd made it back to the apartment just after midnight and flopped onto the couch, nothing out of the ordinary there. Jim was nowhere to be seen, and that was weird because he usually waited up for Leonard to come back before he went to bed. He had a theory about that, which was that Jim was afraid of being alone and didn't want to fall asleep with no one else in the apartment, but he kept it to himself. Leonard's second Ph.D had been in psychiatry, and within a week of their meeting he'd already pegged Jim as somebody with Serious Issues.

Usually he made a habit of trying not to shrink his friends, he really did. And hey, who was he to call anybody out on their mental problems? Leonard had his own fair share, between his dad's awful death and his nasty divorce and his terror of anything that flew—so it wasn't like he could just come out and accuse Jim of being damaged, because who wasn't? Everybody had their own demons. On the face of it, Jim was all sunshine and confidence, and if he'd passed Starfleet's psych evals that must be good enough.

Leonard dragged himself into a sitting position. He called Jim's name, but there was no answer. Turning his head back toward the door he just came in, he saw that Jim's jacket wasn't on the hook on the back of the door, meaning he must be out. Jim liked to go out and get drunk, pick up girls and get in fights. He'd gathered that much in their six months as roommates, even though the last thing Jim usually wanted to talk about was himself. That in itself was another sign of Serious Issues, but again, not Leonard's business.

The kid had been a godsend, really. After being vomited on, Leonard couldn't see any reason why the kid would want to keep hanging out with him, but a week later they were sharing an apartment and eating Chinese food together at lunch, as if that's the way it always had been. He'd learned quickly that Jim was easy to talk to, a good listener, never judgmental and would agreeably let Leonard rant and rave about shit at the hospital, shit in class, shit with his ex, or just shit in general. And despite his growing reputation as a playboy, he somehow never brought girls back to the apartment and always came back before curfew.

Somewhere the kid had learned to toe the line just right without openly defying the rules. If he'd put that genius IQ to use somewhere else he could have really made something of himself already. And yeah, he could be a little abrasive and a little obnoxious, and Leonard knew of at least two fights he'd gotten into, but overall he was a stellar roommate and was becoming a good friend. Leonard didn't begrudge him a little fun, but they had class tomorrow and it was well past curfew. Jim was always back at the apartment on time. The apartment itself mystified Leonard; how does a nineteen year old get issued graduate-level quarters? He'd asked, of course, but Jim had evaded giving him a straight answer.

In any case, he should have been back by now.

And it was giving Leonard a really, really bad feeling.

Shit. He pulled out his comm and punched in Jim's code, hoping the kid wouldn't be pissed about being checked up on. Leonard had inherited a nasty tendency to worry over the smallest things from his father, although he'd been assured his whole life that this was a good trait for a doctor to have. Normally he'd let Jim have his privacy, but since he saw no explanatory note lying around the common area or kitchenette and he'd had no messages left on his comm, he suspected that Jim hadn't  _intended_  to stay out past midnight. That, and he had a bad fucking feeling.

Beep beep, no answer. His bad feeling wasn't getting any better. But then, what could he really do? If the kid had gone somewhere, it wasn't Leonard's business to insist he come home. And he couldn't call campus security, he'd be laughed at over nothing more than a MIA teenage boy and bad feeling. He'd last seen Jim leaving their afternoon classes, when they'd parted ways in front of the main building. Jim was headed for coffee, Leonard for the hospital ER. In spite of being overqualified to work in an emergency station, he had to get in those hours working with Starfleet policies and space-related illness and injury if he wanted an assignment after graduation. He just prayed day and night that it would be a terrestrial assignment.

A second call met with no answer again. He hopelessly fired off a text message. What to do?  _Should_  he call security after all? Wait—couldn't he use the 'net to locate Jim's comm? If he did, would he be violating the kid's privacy? Dammit, the kid was probably fine, he was probably out with some girl at her place and he'd probably show up for class in the morning covered in hickeys and wearing yesterday's uniform. Or he was drinking with some friends in one of the dorm rooms and had fallen asleep, and he'd show up for class reeking of stale beer and with a dick drawn on the side of his face.

But what if he  _wasn't_  fine? What if he was lying in a ditch somewhere, bleeding? What if he'd been robbed, or gotten in a fight, or hit by a car, or caught Antarean Flu and was vomiting his stomach lining all over some dark alley? He'd looked fine when he'd left campus, but sometimes these things come on quick. Leonard got up and started to pace.  _Jesus fucking Christ, stop panicking, moron!_ he told himself. He already knew that his imagination had a tendency to run away from him under stress, which had been one of his ex's main complaints about him.

Breathing slowly through his nose, he stopped and stood still. Finally came to a decision. He went to the bathroom and opened a bottle of sleeping pills, broke one in half, and downed it with a cupful of water from the sink. He really should eat before he slept, but he didn't think his nerves could take it. Jim was fine, Jim was surely safe, and he'd be back in the morning. And if he wasn't, Leonard would simply put in a call to Jim's adviser, Chris Pike. The guy was always sympathetic to the student's needs, and surely he'd make finding Jim safe and sound a priority over punishing him for a one-off.

He finally fell asleep on the couch under a spare blanket, comm clutched in one hand. Good lord he should not be this freaked out over one teenage boy staying out all night. It was what the kids did, right? He ordered his brain to relax. But in a fitful sleep he saw his father's face, telling him to trust his instincts, to wash his hands, to look at the patient as often as the chart, to  _first do no harm_. He saw Jim's face the first day he'd met him, not golden smiles and light but bruised dark and bloody. He saw his imagination's version of the blank shapes of Jim's parents, distant and indifferent. This pulled him out of it, and he sat up on the couch with a groan.

No doubt, his subconscious was trying to tell him something. Leonard knew nothing about Jim's parents, except that they belonged to Starfleet, but he did know the signs of someone who'd been emotionally neglected as a child. The kid went out and drank and fought because he didn't know how to deal with himself, and he was the kind of kid who would resent being checked up on but who really needed checking up on. Leonard was the kind of doctor who did the checking up, and his bad feeling had grown steadily worse over the few hours he'd slept. There was practically a cloud of doom hanging over his head.

The sun was up, at least. Jim wasn't here. Leonard got up, tossed the blanket aside, and sat down at the terminal in the common area. He hadn't even been in his own room today. Hadn't even showered or changed out of his scrubs and lab coat. He ordered the computer to ring up the GPS satellites and home in on Jim's comm signal, then watched in abject horror as the screen quickly zoomed in from a bird's eye view to street view... to a dumpster behind a coffee shop on the other side of town.

Swearing in three languages, Leonard was out the door and halfway across the campus before the computer could helpfully ask him for another location to find. Pike had better fucking be there.


	3. Chapter 3

"No sir, the only relevant item we found in the dumpster was a jacket with a Starfleet logo." the officer said, handing said jacket over to Christopher Pike. It was undamaged, no blood stains or anything out of the ordinary. "The communicator was in one of the pockets. The manager said the jacket was left here yesterday afternoon by a blonde boy in his late teens, and they threw the jacket out after closing. They didn't check the pockets."

Chris knew this was good news considering the terror that had been coursing through him for the last hour, but it did little to calm the dark-haired doctor standing at his shoulder. Leonard McCoy was literally bouncing on his heels in agitation. Pike handed him the jacket, thanking the officer and leading the way back to the 'fleet car they'd driven here in. The local police had responded quickly and efficiently for once, and now had a photo of Jim and an alert for the entire county.

"Look, it's early in the game here." Chris said to McCoy, who had begun to go through the pockets of Jim's jacket. He pulled out a comm unit, an ID badge, an electronic cigarette ("dammit, Jim!") and some credit chips. "There's no evidence of foul play, and he hasn't been gone for more than 24 hours. He probably just forgot his jacket, went home with some chick and overslept."

McCoy did not look convinced, but he said nothing, opening Jim's communicator and flipping through the messages. Chris was surprised at how alarmed the man still was over what was probably just a teenager doing what teenagers do.

"Look, maybe you've seen him on his best behavior for the last few months," he began, "But Jim never has walked the straight and narrow. He's got six arrests on his record. He ever tell you about his past?"

"He ain't  _old enough_  to have a  _past_ ," McCoy drawled, but then shook he head. "All I know is that his parents were 'fleet, he's from Iowa, and he don't wanna talk about it."

"Well that's his business, but I'll go ahead and tell you that he was a world-class hooligan. To the point where his parents sent him away for a few years, even." Pike patted the man's shoulder. "The first time I met him he was drunk off his ass and he'd just been in a fight."

"Yeah, me too."

"Then you already know what his favorite hobbies are-"

"Dammit man, I know what you're thinkin', but he doesn't  _do_  this." McCoy's voice was fierce, "I've seen him go out, I've seen him come back with black eyes, but he doesn't do it on school nights and he always comes back before curfew." He continued digging through the jacket while he talked. "I get the impression that he thinks this is his last chance for... hell, for  _something_ , and he's not screwing it up... He got allergies you know of?"

Chris's eyes narrowed at the white stick in McCoy's hand. "What makes you say that?"

"This is an epi-pen." McCoy's eyebrows were drawn together in a furious v-shape. "People don't carry these things for fun, and they don't fuck around and stay out all night if they've lost one. They go home and get a spare. This is  _proof_ , dammit! Jim had no intention of staying out all night!"

Chris felt a tendril of dread crawl up his spine, though he tried not to show it. That was pretty compelling evidence. Chris was no doctor but he had access to Jim's partly-classified medical files and he'd seen the long ridiculous list of stuff the kid was allergic to. Something to do with the radiation burst he'd been exposed to when the Kelvin's warp core blew, causing all sorts of weird anomalies with his immune and endocrine systems. For an adult a single treatment for radiation sickness would have sufficed, but for a newborn who'd been dependent upon his mother's immune system until mere minutes earlier it was a recipe for permanent damage.

The endocrine stuff had been largely fixable, but even in the 23rd century allergies were tricky and dangerous to deal with. Surely Jim would have come back for his jacket once he realized he'd left his epi-pen in it? Or he'd have gone home last night, not gone roaming around the city. Yeah, he was kind of reckless but he wasn't outright stupid.

"Yeah, ok, he's got allergies. Weird ones." Chris motioned for the doctor to get back in the 'fleet car they'd left campus in. McCoy had come bursting into his office minutes after sunrise and they'd screeched away from the Academy in time to pull up in front of the coffee house at the same moment the cops did. "He might be a hoodlum but he's not dumb. Thing is, I don't even know where to start looking."

McCoy was strapping himself into the passenger seat as Chris climbed in and gripped the steering wheel hard. It was early, not even eight hundred yet. There were a million places the kid could be, and with less than 24 hours on the clock since he'd last been seen Chris couldn't call in Starfleet security to start searching everywhere.

McCoy was holding the pen, twirling it nervously in his fingers. "I know he goes drinking on the weekends, but I usually don't go with him so I can't say where. On school nights he goes to coffee shops with his homework, he loves coffee a little too much..."

There was a sharp tap on the passenger side window, and McCoy rolled it down for the officer standing there. She was holding her radio up as if she'd been listening, leaning down so she could see both McCoy and Chris.

"Captain," she informed them, "Grady Ross Memorial reports admitting a young man, blonde, in Starfleet blacks. Yesterday evening, respiratory distress."

"Fucking shit," spat McCoy, one fist pounding his knee. The officer raised her eyebrows.

"Thank you, officer, you've been excellent," Chris said, cranking the car and pulling out into traffic. He almost called for a police escort so they could get there faster, but if Jim was already in the hospital he was safe, and their taking five minutes longer to get there wouldn't hurt anything. The tension in Chris's chest eased somewhat when the hospital came into view. McCoy did not appear to relax whatsoever.

The Orion nurse at the front, apparently oblivious to Chris's uniform and McCoy's white lab coat, informed them that Jim (John Doe, as it were, since his ID had been in his jacket too) wasn't able to receive visitors. Without hesitation McCoy pulled his own ID out and held it up before her eyes.

"Starfleet Medical. He's ours, and you're going to release him to me. Now."

Two minutes later they were standing in an ICU where Jim was actually  _strapped down_ to a biobed by his wrists, intubated and sedated, and McCoy was reading over the kid's chart in a state of almost apoplectic rage. Chris pulled out his comm and called for an ambulance to transport them to the Starfleet Hospital, getting an ETA of about fifteen minutes. It really wasn't clear to him what as wrong with Jim. There were no signs of injury, but his face was somewhat swollen and there were bruises up and down his forearms. In a fight, maybe? Hit by a car?

He was opening his mouth to ask what the chart said when the doctor on duty entered the ward. McCoy nearly thrust the chart right into the poor man's face.

"What the fuck is this supposed to be?"

Chris wondered vaguely if McCoy ought to prescribe himself some Xanax. The other doctor, a human older than McCoy but younger than Chris, peered at the chart before him while his expression shifted from neutral to confused to pissed in the space of about two seconds.

"A drug overdose, it says." Chris frowned. Jim had to know that was exactly the kind of thing that would get him removed from the Academy.

"But the tox screen is clean," McCoy countered, pointing again at the chart.

"And who knows what kind of alien stuff these kids get up to these days?"

"Have you even looked at him?"

"I just got here this morning, but the EMT that picked him up called it."

"Is your EMT a dirty hobo?" McCoy shrieked, apparently having reached his breaking point. "What the  _fuck_ , am I drunk right now? How drunk am I? Because this kind of incompetence just doesn't _happen_  in real life! And even if it looked like a drug overdose, WHICH IT FUCKING DOESN'T, why is he tied to the goddamned bed?"

Chris reached out and took ahold of the back of McCoy's coat. He didn't know this man very well, had heard of him from Jim of course, but just met him today and had no idea if he might become violent or not. If he did, these assholes would probably deserve it, but they couldn't afford for McCoy to be arrested right this minute.

The other doctor had backed away, but answered in a small voice, "Because he woke up twice and pulled his IV out, fought the nurses, and told the attending that he didn't want any drugs."

"And when a patient tells you that they don't want any drugs, your ER keeps giving them drugs?"

"Of course, we needed to flush his system and get his breathing under control-"

"Just shut the fuck up. I don't even want to fucking hear it." McCoy pulled the epi-pen out of his pocket, and, pulling out of Chris's grip, pressed it to the side of Jim's neck. "I want tri-ox and something to counteract the sedatives, we're taking him as soon as the 'fleet ambulance gets here."

McCoy eyed the other doctor, who hadn't moved.

"Like yesterday, dipshit!"

The doctor was gone. Chris, however, wasn't watching him. His eyes were on Jim, who looked miraculously better even in the few seconds since McCoy had administered the dose of epinephrine. The deep flush of his skin had faded, the swelling in his face was receding almost visibly. An alarm went off above the bed, but McCoy reached out and shut it off. Chris raised an eyebrow.

"Heart monitor," McCoy answered his unasked question. He was still trembling with anger, but his hands were steady. He held up the pen. "This stuff is adrenalin, literally, so when you get a dose your body reacts no differently than if you're being chased by a tiger. Your heart races, you sweat, you hyperventilate, the whole bit. It's inconvenient, but the stuff works like magic. He'll be fine when he gets out of this shithole."

"So, what does the chart say? Was it an allergic reaction?"

"Clearly it was, and clearly whoever picked him up is a fucking moron." On the monitor, Jim's heartbeat was beginning to slow to a more normal rate. "The chart says that he collapsed on the sidewalk a couple blocks from that coffee shop and somebody called an ambulance. The idiot EMTs decided it was an overdose, administered drugs to counteract it, and he promptly coded. Christ on a crutch, how do you mistake anaphylaxis for an overdose? He was dead for two minutes."

Hell, Chris thought, and he shuddered involuntarily. "Only Jim would go the whole semester with no problems and then have his throat close up on the one day he's left his medicine somewhere."

McCoy laughed nervously, not sounding amused at all, and released the restraints on Jim's wrists. Chris watched in silence and let the man do his job, wondering how paramedics, ER and ICU doctors and a whole staff of nurses hadn't picked up on the mistake. Maybe the had too much faith in the people running their ambulances, or maybe it was a case of apathy. Either way, an allergic reaction shouldn't have resulted in Jim spending a night tied to a hospital bed with tubes down his throat. Too bad the ambulance hadn't taken him to the 'fleet hospital, but probably their policy was to take any given patient to the nearest hospital from where they were picked up.

McCoy disconnected the oxygen and pulled the flexible plastic tubing out of Jim's throat. Chris almost gagged at the sight; good thing the kid was asleep. When it was gone he kept breathing normally, with a faint wheeze, and McCoy pressed a control that raised the bed into a reclining position, so that Jim wasn't flat on his back. A nurse appeared with two old-fashioned hypos, the kind with exposed needles, and small tray of various supplies. She took her leave quickly, no doubt having been warned by the doctor of McCoy's foul temper.

McCoy dispensed both hypos into the IV line attached to the back of Jim's right hand—it was only this that made Chris frown at the inside of the kid's elbows, both of which were taped. The IV lines that he'd pulled out, then. Brave kid. Chris wouldn't have had the balls to do it, himself. Jim stirred almost immediately as the sedation lifted, and then began to cough. McCoy stood quietly and let him for a moment, but them Jim's left hand reached for the IV on his right and the doctor snatched both wrists lightning-quick.

"I'm gettin' it, I'm gettin' it, damn you," he said, and Jim's eyes finally focused on him.

"Bones?" he croaked hoarsely, looking incredulous, but he twisted his wrist away from McCoy's grip and latched onto a fistful of the doctor's coat.

"Shush," McCoy leaned down over him, "Look, me and Pike are gettin' ya outta here, but you gotta cooperate with me, understand?" Jim nodded weakly, mouth slightly open in wonder. "Do you know how you got here?" Jim shook his head, then looked like he regretted it. "Feel bad?"

"Like I been hit by a feckin' train," Jim slurred a little, eyes fluttering shut again. "Musta' been the CPR train, right?"

"Damn straight, kid. Hold still."

"Hey, Jim." Chris came forward to distract him, patting the kid on the arm while McCoy pressed a cotton ball to the back of Jim's other hand, which was still clutching his coat, and pulled the IV needle away. "You scared the crap out of us, you know that? McCoy here was convinced you were lying in a ditch somewhere."

"He mighta' been better off in a ditch, than in here with all these incompetent assholes," grumbled McCoy. "Let go for a sec, kid, let me fix your hand." He smashed the cotton ball and wrapped it down with bright green athletic bandage, then let go, whereupon Jim's hand curled back into the fabric of the white coat. The older man made no move to stop this, just gathered up the bandage wrappers and tubes and tossed them in a nearby bin while taking care to stay within Jim's reach.

Chris only had to wonder for a second before his brain clicked into gear: McCoy was a damn  _psychiatrist_. When Jim had chosen a roommate Chris had made it his business to look the guy up. He'd been surprised to find that the kid's first choice was a divorced MD from Georgia a decade older than the average recruits. McCoy had grown up working as a nurse at his father's practice, entering med school at a precocious sixteen and currently holding two Ph.D's and a Master's degree. There were older doctors at the Starfleet hospital, but none more qualified. He must be letting Jim hang onto him because he knew that's what Jim needed to do—

The door opened softly, interrupting his train of thought. Two Starfleet paramedics stood there in crisp white uniforms, one with a lightweight aluminum wheelchair tucked under one arm.

"Sir," said one, "the ambulance is ready in the back parking lot."

McCoy shook Jim's shoulder gently, rousing him from a kind of drowsy trance. "Come on, kid, let's blow this joint."


	4. Chapter 4

The ambulance ride back to Starfleet Medical Center was quiet and somewhat awkward. Jim had opted to stay in the wheelchair, rather than lie down on a stretcher. That was fine, if he had the energy for it; the chart from Grady Ross said that he'd been sedated for the entire night, so he'd been lying flat for long enough. Leonard pulled a tricorder from a shelf overhead and set it up to scan on standard human settings: Jim's oxygen was too low, as was his temperature and his blood pressure. He'd sustained massive bruising and two cracked ribs, no doubt from chest compressions.

It was a crying shame that for all their modern technology, the standard treatment for true cardiac arrest was still so damaging, though that spoke more to the limits of the human body than to the limits of human ingenuity. Of course, humans were a lot more resilient than many supposedly "superior" species gave them credit for. Jim's almost flippant comment about being hit by the "CPR train" spoke of a resilience that Leonard was perhaps not prepared for. Was this a common enough occurrence that Jim knew immediately upon awakening what it felt like to have been resuscitated?

This was not the moment to interrogate him about it. One of the medics had been reading the tricorder over Leonard's shoulder and Jim nearly jumped out of his skin as the man moved toward him with a hypo.

"No drugs," he croaked, waving the man off weakly, but the medic wasn't easily dissuaded.

"It's just a pain reliever, standard procedure," the medic said, reaching forward again even as Jim cringed away. Leonard put on his best scowly face. This was one of his pet peeves.

"D'you speak English?" he said loudly. "The patient just said  _no drugs_."

The medic froze, mouth falling open. Leonard took the opportunity to place himself physically in between the man and Jim, who was practically coming out of the chair in anxiety.

"Sir, standard procedure-"

"-does not involve forcing medication on an unwilling patient." Leonard relieved him of the hypo, tossed it into a nearby bin. "He's conscious, lucid and able to communicate, and we don't perform any procedures on such a patient without consent. Clear?"

The medic nodded, reddening, and slunk off toward the front of the cabin. They were still a few minutes out from the hospital and the ambulance sped along smoothly. These things had the highest of the high-end shock absorbers, so as to keep from jostling unstable patients on the way to safety. Leonard had already commed ahead for a room to be ready and had Grady Ross transmit the kid's chart to the 'fleet's databanks. Pike had left Jim in Leonard's hands with the intention of checking in with his office and then bringing Jim lunch at the hospital in a couple of hours.

Leonard glanced down at Jim, wondering if he would even want to eat. He was sitting hunched down in the wheelchair, hands pressed over his face and visibly trembling. This was hardly a shadow of the bright, confident boy he'd lived with for the last six months. The sight tugged on Leonard's heartstrings in a way that it normally wouldn't have, but he couldn't help mentally comparing the kid to a half drowned puppy that needed to be pulled out of the water.

"Hey," he said, dropping to his knees in front of the chair. Jim peered at him over pale fingers. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay," Jim said, his tongue still not quite with it. "All of 'em do it."

"I know. It's hard to stop somebody who really believes they're doin' the right thing."

"Tell me about it." Jim rubbed his face with one hand, and Leonard noted that his fingernails looked more purple than they should. Maybe it was the lighting in here, or maybe Jim was anemic. He decided not to say anything about it now.

"You told the doctors at Grady Ross not to give you any drugs, either." Leonard said, tugging on the short sleeve of Jim's white ICU pajamas to get his attention, "People usually don't say that for fun."

"Maybe I like the pain," Jim said, "and I wanna keep it. Been told 'ma kinky bastard."

"Dammit, this is serious-"

"So maybe my 'mmune system rode the short bus."

"Better answer. Pike said he thought you had weird allergies."

Jim nodded, making no comment, staring at his own lap. This didn't really say too much about the kid's state of mind, but Leonard made another mental note. Victims of cardiac arrest often struggled for a time as their serotonin levels normalized. In nature an arrest meant sudden death, so upon survival the brain was often not sure what to do. Chances were this would pass in a few days and the kid would be fine.

"Kid, you gotta help me out here," he cajoled, not really hopeful. "Can we give you anything at all for pain? I know there's no way you ain't hurtin' right now."

"Nope. I'm screwed as usual." Jim finally looked at him, and frowned. "Don' look like that, Bones, s'not your fault."

Leonard forced the guilty look off his face and patted the kid's hand as the ambulance pulled to a stop. The feeling he loathed the most was helplessness, the same one that had cropped up as his father had grown sicker and sicker. He hated not being able to help, and had said as much. But his dad had just grinned at him weakly and said,  _sometimes the best medicine amounts to a little TLC._ And while that was true enough Leonard had never been one to just give up when told he couldn't do something.

He bit his lip as the medics wheeled Jim down the sterile hallways and into a prepped recovery room at the back of ICU wing. Surely, he told himself, he could find something that he could do. He picked up a PADD on the way in and called up Jim's chart from the other hospital. The medics tried to lift Jim out of the chair but Leonard shooed them away and let him climb out of it and onto the biobed on his own. The sensors came on immediately, showing the same readings on the screen over the bed that Leonard had already deduced from the tricorder.

"Bones." Jim was still sitting, drowsily, arms locked around his knees. Leonard touched the remote on the bed and adjusted it so that Jim could lean back against it without lying down. "You should get somebody else."

"To do what?" he replied absently, fiddling with the temperature setting.

"To babysit me." Jim finally reclined back against the bed when Leonard pressed him into it with one hand. "You're missing class."

Leonard raised an eyebrow, threw a blanket over his new patient. "What, you don't trust me?"

Jim's face reddened a little as he pulled at the blanket. "I do trust you."

"Then what? Missing one class won't ruin me."

"I just... really fucking hate doctors." He grasped a fistful of Leonard's coat again, almost as if he wanted to tear it off. "Don't want you to be one of  _them_ , you know? Don't want to hate you."

"Well, I'm off-duty so you can just pretend that I'm not one of them for now."

" _Bones_."

Leonard sighed. He didn't really have a good reason not to turn Jim over to another doctor, and yet he was firmly against the idea. There were other doctors on the floor right now—good ones—but the thought of leaving Jim at their mercy made him nervous. In his head he could see that medic again, advancing on Jim with a hypospray full of anaphylaxis. In spite of the staff's good intentions, Leonard's instincts told him that a hospital was not a safe place for the kid to be.

And his dad had always told him to trust his instincts, hadn't he?

"Kid, just don't fuss right now, ok?" He sat on the edge of the bed, fingers working over the PADD to call up Jim's medical records so he could compare them to the chart from the other hospital. "Let me handle this, and we'll talk about it again when you're better. Deal?"

Jim nodded, apparently too wrung-out to argue. The PADD was still searching, so Leonard reached over the bed and pulled a package of tubes and a nasal cannula out of the cabinet, along with a small aerosol can and packet of Vaseline. Jim didn't argue or move away while Leonard connected the hoses and draped the tubing carefully across his face, just sat there looking somewhat defeated. The monitors over the bed adjusted themselves to a happier state after he turned on the oxygen, though.

Jim did flinch when Leonard tugged gently on the tape inside his left elbow, because as he'd suspected the skin underneath was already angry and red. He saturated the tape with the contents of the metal can he'd taken down, and Jim looked surprised when the tape then came away with no resistance. Leaning across the bed, he repeated the procedure on the other taped elbow, then ripped open the packet of Vaseline and spread a thin layer of it over the affronted skin with one finger.

"Seriously?"

"What?" Leonard gathered up the discarded wrappings and threw them into the trash.

"I usually just rip the tape off."

"And I bet it usually leaves big nasty welts all over your arm that don't go away for a week or two, too."

"... pretty much."

"Well, next time, just tell somebody and they'll get the tape off before you leave. You're probably allergic to the adhesive, and that's actually pretty common." Leonard peered down at the PADD, flipped through to a list of Jim's known allergies and  _Jesus fucking Christ_ , what the fuck?

"There won't  _be_  a next time."

"You know, something tells me there  _will_." Leonard reached into his pocket and pulled out Jim's epi-pen, which still had two doses left, and tapped the kid on the arm with it. Jim took it, a strange look on his face.

"Where'd you find this?" he said, twirling it between his fingers.

"In a dumpster behind a coffee shop. Your jacket and your comm are in Pike's car."

Jim's eyes widened, and Leonard could practically see the gears turning as he worked out what must have happened. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again, staring at the pen in his hand. Leonard turned back to the PADD, scrolling through the history and coming up very short. There was nothing beyond the last five years, which was weird, and a lot of the stuff that was there was incomplete.

He was about to ask about it when a nurse came in with a portable blood scanner. Leonard scribbled down a short list of items he wanted and she was gone again, promising a quick return. He turned back to Jim with the scanner in hand, pulled an alcohol swab and a cotton ball out of a cabinet and sat back down on the edge of the bed.

"Gonna have to prick your finger," he said. Jim held out one hand to him and when Leonard took it it was cold. He adjusted the bed's temperature again before wiping the index finger with alcohol and pressing it to the bottom of the scanner against what he fondly thought of as the "stabby bit." He was sure there was a proper name for it, but he could never be bothered to remember.

The device took its drop of blood and Leonard handed the cotton ball to Jim, who already knew to press it between his thumb and bleeding finger. Kid was almost a pro. Leonard put the scanner down while it worked and was rummaging in the cabinet for something he could tape the cotton ball with when Jim spoke:

"Sorry, Bones." he said.

Leonard looked down. "For what?"

"For the dumpster." Jim twitched a little. "Pike said you thought I must be lying in a ditch."

Leonard resisted the urge to pat him on the head like a puppy. "Not your fault, kid." He pulled out a roll of stretchy athletic tape and shut the cabinet. "Shit happens, and I have a tendency to blow things out of proportion."

Jim was going to say something else, but the nurse came back in at that moment. She had a tray with various bits and pieces on it, and a cup of ice, which she handed to Jim. It was a testament to how bad Jim must have felt that he took it with just a nod of thanks, and did not offer her so much as a flirtatious grin. She also had a lightweight metal gas tank with her, which she set down behind the head of the bed near where the oxygen hoses were connected. Leonard thanked her and dismissed her, looking over the blood scanner's readout.

"What's in the tank?" Jim asked, playing with the ice.

"Nitrous oxide." Leonard pulled down a splitter hose and set about connecting it to Jim's oxygen. "Same stuff dentists use. Not the same as real pain reliever, but it'll take the edge off some. Take a few deep breaths." He turned the nitrous on, ensuring that Jim was still getting enough oxygen to make the monitors happy. "I'm gonna have to give you an IV, and I need you to not pull it out, ok?"

Jim nodded, already visibly relaxed from the gas. He turned his head against the pillow to watch as Leonard picked up a saline IV bag from the tray and a handful of pre-filled syringes. He held them up for Jim to inspect.

"This one is multivitamin," he said, "and here's some vitamin D, some extra potassium for your heart, a tiny bit of norepinephrine to raise your blood pressure—I normally wouldn't do that, but it ain't a drug—and this one is iron. Did you know you're anemic?" Jim nodded but didn't elaborate. "And all of that's ok? You're not going to pull it out?"

"It's fine," Jim murmured, suddenly grinning like an idiot, "and you're a fucking genius."

"I like to think so." Leonard dispensed the syringes into the saline bag and shook it up. He snapped on a pair of gloves. "You feelin' good right now?"

"Yeah, really."

"Good. Give me your hand." Leonard swabbed the back of Jim's as-yet unpoked left hand with an alcohol pad and picked up a butterfly needle off the tray. It was an easy stick, and Jim offered no resistance. The kid's hands had warmed up some, and he seemed content to lay back against the pillow while Leonard wrapped the catheter down with more athletic tape, hung the bag, and gathered up more wrappers and bits of tubing for disposal.

"Bones?"

"Kid?" Leonard glanced at the monitor, which was very satisfied and green now that Jim's blood pressure was rising incrementally toward a more normal level. Then he looked down at Jim, who looked infinitely better than he had when they'd arrived less than an hour ago.

"How long do I have to stay here?"

Leonard pulled up a chair next to the bed, having settled everything else to his liking. Jim was stabilized and warm and in somewhat less pain, and under the circumstances he considered that a win.

"Hard to say, but I'll try to make a deal with you." He touched the remote, lowering the head of the bed until Jim was lying down but still not quite flat, and the kid automatically shifted onto his side facing Leonard. "I really should make you stay for at least forty eight hours. But, today's Friday and it's almost ten hundred. Pike said he wanted to bring you lunch. If you will nap until he gets here, and eat your lunch, and then lay quietly and rest for the afternoon, I will take you home with me at say, nineteen hundred. On the condition that you wear a monitor bracelet and you _stay in_  for the whole weekend. No drinkin', no girls. You'll lay on the couch and do homework. Understand?"

Jim nodded, that funny nitrous-induced glaze in his eyes, and nestled obediently into the pillow. Leonard ordered the lights down and settled in to study his glowing PADD as they both lapsed into comfortable silence.


	5. Chapter 5

Jim came to consciousness unwillingly, already aware from the sharp antiseptic scent of the air and the soft beep of machinery that he was in a hospital. Fucking great. But, he noted, for once in his life he was in a hospital and he wasn't cold, wasn't in agonizing pain, didn't have anything shoved down his throat and did not seem to be restrained. There was indeed an ache deep in his chest and around his ribcage when he inhaled, and yet he seemed to be cocooned in warmth, curled in a comfortable position on his side.

Huh.

He opened his eyes experimentally, took stock of the situation. It was dark, just sunlight pouring through cracked blinds in windows somewhere behind him. Jim wrinkled his nose at the feel of an oxygen hose across his face, and when he moved his arms cautiously under the covers he could feel tubing drag along with him. An IV attached to the back of his left hand, which was warm as the rest of him under the blankets; he was practically weighed down with blankets. Bones was slumped in a chair next to the biobed, chin on his chest, breathing evenly in a light sleep.

Bones, Bones,  _Bones_. Bones gripping his arms, supporting him as he maneuvered himself clumsily into a wheelchair. Bones snatching a Hypo of Death from the hands of an unwitting medic. Bones pressing a cannula under his nose with warm fingers. Bones inserting an IV with the barest of stings, rather than digging around for a vein like  _some_  people he knew. Bones pulling more blankets around him as he drifted into a hazy sort of trance. Bones's soft accent, telling him not to fuss right now.

Desperate anxiety welled up in Jim's chest as he stared at the dozing man, constricting his heart for a long moment. Bones didn't need to be here, burdening himself with Jim's problems. He had enough on his own plate between the stress of leaving his life behind in Georgia, the hours he worked at the hospital in addition to a full time curriculum at the Academy, and whatever ghost it was that haunted him from his father's death. On a more selfish and vain level, Jim didn't really want Bones to see him like this.

God, it was pathetic. He was on the command track; he wasn't supposed to be susceptible to stupid things like allergies. Of all the bullshit. Unfortunately, Jim knew himself well enough to know he was unwilling to admit his own insecurities, so he already knew that he would quietly submit to Bones doing doctory things and wouldn't broach the subject of getting someone else to do it again. And in fairness he was more comfortable right now than he had ever been in a hospital setting. Maybe Bones wasn't like the rest of them.

This morning's events had been odd in more ways than one, though. Bones had missed class for him and was now sleeping in a hard chair next to his bed on a day when he wasn't even scheduled to work in the hospital. He could be at the apartment, sleeping in his own bed, while another doctor monitored Jim. For that matter, a ton of the stuff Jim remembered him doing was stuff nurses usually did; the IV, the blankets, the finger pricking. Why hadn't Bones just delegated the tasks to someone who was on the clock and gone home? In fact, he'd sent the nurse away after she'd brought in the tank of nitrous, hadn't he?

Shit, the nitrous. Jim made a mental note to remind Bones again of what a fucking genius he was. Jim had been injured more times than he could count, had endured bone knitters and dermal regenerators without so much as an aspirin due to his allergies. Not once had anybody been creative enough to think of something like this. He felt a little giddy and high, but noticed no other side effects, and it wasn't a drug. Just a harmless gas, just  _air_. He was going to buy Bones dinner every night for the rest of the year, and probably the rest of next year too.

He lay quietly in the silence for long minutes, making a guess from the position of the sun that it was probably about midday. His last solid memory was of sitting in a coffee shop with his notes. Had that been yesterday? The day before? He didn't remember going to the hospital but he remembered waking up in one, hardly able to breathe, grappling with an orderly after pulling out an IV that was probably full of sedatives and antihistamines. Waking again with Bones standing over him, telling him to cooperate, walking alongside his wheelchair down to the ambulance.

The whole situation was a little weird. Jim knew, in his head, that Bones was a doctor. He knew from just chatting with him that he'd grown up working in his father's practice in Georgia, finished med school in half the time, had his own practice before most med students would have finished their internships.  _It's good to have a head start_ , he'd said. Still, Jim had never actually seen him doing his job and he wished he could have kept that disconnect. He knew it was his own hangup, but fuck doctors.

… Man, he really had to pee. There was a door just a couple of feet from the left side of his bed that was most likely a bathroom. He knew the IV stand could follow him, but doubted that his oxygen hose would reach all the way. He stretched under the covers, wondering if an alarm would sound when he pulled it off. He didn't want to wake Bones with it, but he didn't want to wake him up to get permission to take a leak either. Hmmmm.

After some deliberating, he pulled the hose away from his face and left it on the pillow. He'd have to go sometime, and Bones couldn't sleep forever. He was going to have a nasty crick in his neck when he woke up as it was. Jim slipped out of the bed, gripping the IV stand for support, and padded quietly into the bathroom. He relieved himself quickly and splashed water on his face from the sink with his free hand. The other had the IV stuck to it, weirdly, with purple sports wrap instead of tape.

His face in the mirror was positively ghastly, pale with veins showing around his eyes. He tried to push his hair back into an acceptable kind of order, but gave up when he realized that the dull ache in his chest was morphing into something much more unpleasant. He was leaning heavily on the IV stand when he made it back to the bed, pain shooting through his left side as if he were actively being stabbed. Ooof. He'd had worse, but crawling back into the covers was no fun.

"Funny thing about nitrous," drawled a voice, and Jim looked up to see Bones smirking at him in the stripes of sunlight, "When you stop breathing it, it stops working."

Jim sighed. "Sleepy Bones one, Stealthy Kirk zero." He pulled the tubes back up to his face, around his ears. "I really, really had to piss, ok?"

"Yer fine, kid." Bones rubbed his face with one hand. "Pike just commed me, he'll be here in a few minutes. Says he's got your lunch and a new jacket for you, since yours spent the night in a dumpster and all."

Jim flushed a little, but didn't really have any defense for that. He did not know how his jacket had gotten into a dumpster, even if he did know that Bones had probably flipped his lid several times over. He settled back down into the bed as the nitrous took effect again and the pain faded to something very tolerable. Bones was so awesome. He fought back a stupid grin. No wonder it was called laughing gas.

Pike arrived within just a few minutes, bearing Jim's jacket plus food and bottled water for the three of them. Bones adjusted the biobed so Jim could sit up and eat what turned out to be a generous styrofoam bowl of shepherd's pie. Mashed potatoes with beef, onion and blackeye peas. Jim didn't feel particularly hungry, but Bones was watching and he remembered their agreement: eat lunch, rest quietly, go home tonight.

He ate. Bones updated Pike on Jim's condition and his plans to let him go back to the apartment that evening. Jim had mostly zoned out of the conversation, having nearly emptied his bowl, when a bespectacled man in 'fleet Medical whites appeared in the doorway.

"Dr. McCoy," the man nodded, "Captain, Cadet."

"Dr. Fitzgerald," Bones turned to the other two, "this is the hospital's main director."

"Ed Fitzgerald, M.D." said the man. "Look, I've got to cut to the chase here." he looked from Pike to Bones to Jim, then back to Bones. "Why are there reporters outside the front entrance, and why do I have an angry message from Grady Ross Memorial about a couple of Starfleet suits kidnapping one of their patients without appropriate paperwork?"

Bones just gaped at the man. " _Reporters_?"

"Christ," muttered Jim. He put down the spork he was eating with and buried his face in his hands. If they got his face onto the holonets he'd probably have to leave the damned Academy. The Admiralty had already determined that no such disruptions would be allowed. Fuck,  _fuck_.

Pike stepped up, since clearly Jim's pity party and Bones's gaping were useless here.

"We did not  _kidnap_  Cadet Kirk," he said smoothly, sounding very professional in Jim's opinion, "We simply removed him from an unsafe situation. We don't owe Grady Ross anything, especially considering that they picked up a young man in partial 'fleet uniform and then  _failed to notify us that they had him._  His roommate was up worrying all night. You may tell the reporters that we have no comment on the situation, and if anyone failed to follow protocol it was Grady Ross themselves."

"Cadet  _Kirk_. That explains what they were saying about us holding the Kelvin Baby hostage."

Jim bit the inside of his cheek so hard it began to bleed, but didn't say anything. Bones didn't open his mouth either, but his eyes were suddenly completely round with surprise. Jim waited for him to look over, but he seemed to be making a point of avoiding Jim's gaze.

Pike rolled his eyes dramatically. "The Kelvin Baby is on some god-forsaken farm in Iowa. You think his mother would let him have anything to do with Starfleet after what happened to his father?"

"But..."

"Kirk's a pretty common name, ain't it?" Bones chimed in. "In fact, since the Kelvin Disaster I'll bet there's a ton a' Jameses and Georges runnin' around here that wasn't before."

Jim remained frozen where he was, lunch forgotten, having nothing useful to add. He wasn't sure if Bones believed what he was saying, or if Pike had said something to him, or if he was just following Pike's lead. Either way, Jim was buying Bones dinner every night for the next  _decade_.

"Look," said Pike, patting the befuddled Dr. Fitzgerald on the arm, "you can pull up his chart and see that it's not him. Just tell the reporters they've been sent on a wild goose chase, and tell Grady Ross that we'll deal with them when we can."

"Very well, but I'll be expecting a full report on this, McCoy." Fitzgerald exited stiffly, looking skeptical.

Bones stared after him for a long minute. Then he turned around to Jim, still frozen in place, and—

" _Please_  tell me that ain't vomit." Bones was already standing up and reaching for him before Jim realized that the place he'd bitten was bleeding enough to be leaking from the corner of his mouth. He shook his head.

"I bit mahself," he said, trying not to spray blood everywhere, and Bones was disentangling the oxygen hose from him, telling him to go wash his mouth out with cold water. He didn't ask what had prompted the self-injury, and Jim was grateful. He obeyed quickly, a wave of guilt washing over him.  _I am going to give Bones a heart attack._

Jim took a moment to breathe after the bleeding stopped, before he exited the bathroom on shaky legs. This wasn't nearly the shittiest day of his life, but it was the shittiest one he could remember in the last six months. Who was he kidding anyway? He could have spent the rest of his life getting drunk in Bumfuck, Iowa and nobody would have blinked an eye.

Without the nitrous the stabbing pain in his side was back, but he climbed back onto the bed and let Bones fix his covers and oxygen without complaint. Pike paced back and forth, yelling into his comm unit.

"No, that isn't what I said." he was saying. "There's been a security breach with the Kirk boy and I need somebody down here for damage control right  _now_."

This was definitely a conversation Jim wanted to pay attention to, but Bones was leaning over him with gloves and one of those stupid tiny flashlights, so he opened his mouth obediently.

"That'll be fine with a dermal regen," he said, touching the controls to flatten the bed down, "so I'm gonna go ahead and turn the nitrous up and fix that and your ribs. I don't like to do this without pain reliever, but..."

"S'okay." Jim reached out to pat the doctor's arm clumsily, not liking the guilt in that voice. "I've done it all before."

"It's going to hurt," Bones said honestly, "But hopefully you're going to be pretty high, so you won't care much."

"What kinda high?" Jim grinned and then stopped, because  _fuck_  his mouth hurt, "I don't want bad trip, Bones."

"I'm not for sure, really," Bones said, fiddling with the gas tank. "Never tried it myself. Little kids will say they feel like their hands are floating. You might just fall asleep. Be still, take deep breaths."

This didn't feel any different than before, really. Jim focused on Bones, on gloved fingers on his face, on the familiar heat of a dermal regenerator wand against his cheek. Pike was still talking, a rumble in the background. Then there was the whirr of a bone knitter against his ribs, sharp but distant pain, a warm hand gripping his own, and he really  _was_  flying—

He woke some time later, in darkness and quiet and warmth. He wasn't flying, but he was good enough, and he didn't want to open his eyes and face reality. The possibility that Bones knew who he was, that the Admiralty couldn't cover it up anymore, and that he might be on his way back to Iowa within a matter of days.

He must have made some sort of noise, because suddenly there was motion at his side and he opened his eyes to find Bones there. Poor guy looked like hell. Probably didn't get home from his shift the night before until midnight, probably was up early beating down Pike's door, probably hadn't caught a break since that chair nap he'd had before lunch. How long had Jim been out? He raised a hand to his face, feeling fuzzy and foolish. The oxygen cannula was still there.

"What happened?" he mumbled, realizing that Bones was sitting the bed back up for him.

"You fell asleep," Bones handed him a styrofoam cup of some kind of juice. "You're fine. Feel any pain?"

Jim shook his head. "My chest aches a little. I'm good."

"The bruising there is too deep for the dermal regen to reach it. It'll ease up in a few days."

Jim nodded, looked around. "Where's Pike?"

"He had to go to a secret meeting with the Admiralty. Said he'd check back as soon as he could."

" _Christ_."

"They got Admiral Marcus to come stare down the reporters. That guy is scary as fuck."

"Word." He sipped the juice. "So...?"

"So as far as I know, you're in the clear." Bones sat heavily in the chair beside the bed, where he'd been dozing earlier that morning. "Marcus and Pike swore me to secrecy, granted me access to your medical files, and disappeared."

Fucking great, that was what he needed. For Bones to see his stepfather's abuse, to see Tarsus IV, to see two suicide attempts and all sorts of shit that he wanted to put behind him. For Bones to feel sorry for him, to treat him like an invalid like everybody did after they knew. Fucking bullshit, why did his whole life have to be such  _bullshit_?

Bones was looking at him. Had he read it already? Probably not, or he'd be asking a million questions.

Instead all he said was, "What's that weird face for?"

Jim hadn't realized he was making a face. He looked down at his lap, at his juice, anywhere but at Bones. He didn't want to say it out loud, because it would be an affront to his pride and an admission that his self-esteem wasn't what everybody thought it was. He was supposed to be a cocky bastard. But given all that had happened in the last day, did he not owe his friend the truth?

Yeah, he did. Dammit.

"I just." Jim paused.  _Grow a pair, Kirk._  "I didn't want you to see it, is all."

Bones frowned. "Why not?"

"Can't tell you."

Now the older man just rolled his eyes. "Look, I started helpin' at my dad's practice when I was four. All the patients thought I was the cutest little nurse's aid. I've seen a lot of shit since then, and I promise there's nothin' in your file I ain't seen before."

"And I promise there  _is_  stuff you haven't seen before," said Jim, trying not to sound petulant, "But it's classified for a  _reason_ , and there might be security cameras in here. We can't talk about it."

"Oh." Bones eyed him suspiciously. "Very mysterious, but fair enough."

"So you haven't looked at it yet?"

"Nah. You're out of danger right now and I'm too tired for it to sink in. I'll read it tomorrow, there's no school and Pike pulled me off the ER rotation so I can stay home with you."

"You don't have to do that," Jim said quickly, but Bones cut him off.

"The only reason you're not spending the night here is that honestly I don't feel like it's safe." He pointed at the door. "The first dumbass in scrubs that comes through that door with some Tylenol could put you right back where you were last night, and I can't have that. Besides, I could use some time to catch up on my homework. I can get extra hours over the holidays, I'm sure there's going to be all sorts of shenanigans that turn up in the ER."

"But you've already done so much," Jim insisted, "You've even been in here doing the nurse's job when you could have been asleep in your own bed, instead of fiddling with oxygen and setting up IV's—"

"Yeah, but did it hurt?"

"What?"

"The IV. Did it hurt?"

"... not really, no."

"That's 'cause I'm better at it than some damn nurse."

"And you're so humble about it, too."

Bones grinned. "I calls it like I sees it. They can learn to get that shit right the first time or get the fuck out. It'll be fine, kid." He laid a remote control on Jim's lap. "Find something on the tv to watch, take a nap, do whatever. I'll find you a PADD to read on. We'll be out of here in a few hours, get you settled on the couch at home, and I'll order us pizza."

"No," Jim took the remote. " _I'll_  order us pizza."

Bones nodded. "Deal."

 


	6. Chapter 6

It was so time to get out of here. Chris had made it back to Jim's hospital room at sundown to find Jim showered and dressed in clean cadet reds, sitting on the edge of the biobed while McCoy fiddled with a tricorder. Jim's blonde hair was slicked down, still wet, and his face was pale, but otherwise he looked to be almost back to one hundred percent. You'd never know that he had been dead for a short time just the evening before.

Security was out in droves after the incident with the reporters, patrolling every block of the campus, the adjacent Medical Center and student housing blocks. Everything was under control, but McCoy had commed him earlier, telling him that it would be helpful if Chris would meet them at the hospital and then adjourn to their apartment with them for dinner. And while Chris didn't really think they needed an escort back to their apartment, which was literally right across the street, he couldn't argue with the doctor's logic.

"This is less about the reporters and more about Jim," McCoy had explained. "He needs to know that somebody is looking out for him, somebody besides his doctor. He's not gonna want other cadets to know what's happened, so you're it."

"You don't think he'll resent having an extra babysitter?" Chris had asked, because he could already hear Jim's complaints in his head.

"He'll act like he's annoyed, but don't forget I've been living with the kid for six months and I've already shrinked him. Call up any other mental health pro and describe Jim's personality, they'll give you the same advice."

Right, psychiatrist, he'd almost forgotten. He didn't mind. Chris liked to know his students, and McCoy wasn't his own advisee but he was Jim's roommate so chances were they'd be running into each other more and more frequently in the future. Between Jim and the Admiralty his whole day was wasted, so he gave up and closed up his office at seventeen hundred.

So here he was, watching McCoy fuss over the cadet and administer what looked suspiciously like a field sobriety test. Jim sat still, perplexed, while the doctor ran his fingertips through his hair and across his face.

"Tell me if I touch any place that tingles or feels numb," he said. Jim's confusion was apparent, but he was clearly so determined to get out of here that for once he didn't open his mouth.

"Now without looking, reach down with your right hand and touch your left foot."

Jim raised an eyebrow, but did as he was told. McCoy just grinned, obviously having a good time.

"Now touch all of my fingertips with your fingertips." McCoy held out his hands, fingers spread. Jim obeyed again. "Good. Now hold my hands and squeeze as hard as you can." Jim did so. McCoy flattened his hands, palms up, and said, "Now try to push my hands straight down."

Apparently this was where Jim drew the line.

"What the fuck are we doing, Bones, playing patty cake?" he said, and Chris hid a grin behind one hand. That was the same thing he would have asked if he'd been in Jim's position. Still, he was interested in seeing where the doctor went with this.

"We're testing for signs of neurological damage before I let you go out and walk around on your own." McCoy flattened turned his hands over. "Now push my hands up."

Jim pressed his hands to McCoy's and lifted upwards. McCoy turned his hands to face Jim.

"Now push me away," he said.

"Don't you have a tricorder for this?" Jim whined, pushing against McCoy's flat palms.

"I do, but it only tells me so much without a real brain scan. Unless you'd like to go hop in the MRI machine?" Wide-eyed, Jim shook his head. "Good. Stand up."

Jim slid off the table with McCoy standing directly in front of him, but he seemed steady.

"Close your eyes, reach your left hand out to the side, and then touch one finger to your nose without looking."

Jim grumbled but did as he was told. "This is ridiculous."

"This is to make sure you don't trip and crack your skull open. Now do it with the right hand." McCoy made some notes on the PADD in his hand. "Stand on one foot."

Jim lifted his left boot off the ground, and McCoy stepped perceptibly closer to him but didn't touch.

"Other foot." Jim switched feet. "You can move all your fingers and toes. Do you feel any tingling or numbness in your hands or feet or anywhere on your body?" Jim shook his head. "When you stood up just now did you get any sense of vertigo, any dizziness, lightheadedness?" No again.

"You're a liar, but you're fit to walk across the street." McCoy put the PADD down, raising an eyebrow at Jim's incredulous look. "What? I saw your pupils dilate a little bit when you got up. Your blood pressure's still out of whack, so the room prob'ly spun around, right?"

Jim nodded, cheeks coloring.

"Go fix your hair back, I messed it up, and then we'll go. And don't trip."

Jim disappeared into the bathroom. Chris almost collapsed into laughter as soon as he was gone.

"Not that I didn't enjoy the show," he gasped, "But what was that all about?"

"The tricorder does show some relevant readings, but you can tell more about a patient's neurological and mental state by their actual reactions." McCoy's lips formed a thin line as he signed something on the PADD and turned it off. "Don't get me wrong, scanners are great, but sometimes you need to look at the patient himself to get the whole picture."

"So, what, that was a psych eval?"

"Among other things. The patient is compliant and non-combative. And he's himself, and he's fine. Needs a meal and a good night's sleep and by tomorrow he'll prob'ly be itching to get off the couch."

Jim reappeared and they made their way out of the hospital. McCoy had a paper bag full of hyposprays, which he explained were vitamin and iron shots, plus tri-ox for every three hours to make sure Jim got enough oxygen to recover as quickly as possible. He'd also made an appointment for the kid to be checked over by a second doctor on Monday morning before classes.

"Careful, though." Chris warned. "He's officially your patient now, and after what happened Marcus says he doesn't want anybody touching Kirk but you."

"It's just a scan," shrugged McCoy, "and it's best to have a second set of eyes. This other guy's a good doctor. And if Jim needs any further treatment I'll be doing it myself."

Jim looked mildly annoyed at their conversation. Probably didn't like people talking about him as if he wasn't there. But the kid looked a lot more relaxed out in the open air than he had even as they were leaving through the ICU waiting room, and Chris decided that maybe he was too glad to get away to go mouthing off already. As before, he didn't open his mouth. Maybe McCoy was teaching him some restraint? Couldn't hurt.

The walk to the apartment was short, with no sign of any reporters or disturbances. They passed two cadets, who saluted Chris, but otherwise were undisturbed. McCoy let them in with his keycard and hit the lights. Chris, who had been in a lot of dorm rooms, was pleasantly surprised to find that the place was tidy and clean. For some reason he'd taken Jim for a slob, but he was glad to be proven wrong.

These apartments came fully furnished, with a common living area, a kitchenette, and two bedrooms with two separate bathrooms. They were intended for returning graduate students who were looking for new qualifications, or for guest professors such as Captains who were staying planetside for one reason or another. The Admiralty had agreed when Chris had recommended one for Jim, saying that given his minor celebrity status and his record he might fare better if kept somewhat segregated from the other cadets.

The little living room was cozy, with a predictably beige tone to all the walls and provided furnishings. There was a couch and coffee table, two big fluffy recliners, a television mounted on one wall. In one corner was a desk with a terminal. The kitchenette at the back had a half-sized sink, refrigerator and replicator. There were a few medical journals on the table, a single coffee cup on the counter by the sink, but otherwise the whole place looked very well cared for.

McCoy gestured Chris into a recliner and went to rummage for sodas while Jim leaned over the terminal to place an order for pizza. Chris checked his comm for messages, pleased to find that Marcus had received McCoy's complaint about Grady Ross's incompetent staff and had reported them to the state authorities. Surely ensuring that an EMT could identify an allergic reaction with a tricorder was part of training over there?

"Looks like Marcus is about to be all over Grady Ross like a fat kid on doughnuts." he announced. "They'll be thoroughly investigated, and I'm sure they'll call the three of us up to testify."

"Good." said McCoy, handing Chris a bottle of soda. "I'm still havin' trouble believin' that it actually happened. Dammit Jim, sit!"

Jim dropped onto the couch, where McCoy bundled him up in a white blanket dragged from a nearby closet. He opened the paper bag he'd left on the table and pulled out a set of metal monitor bracelets. He snapped one around his own wrist, the other around Jim's.

"You'll wear this until Monday morning," he said, sounding somehow stern but not intimidating. "If your vital signs move out of a certain range it'll set off an alarm on my end. So take it easy, understand? We're gonna eat, and you're gonna lay here and rest. Any questions?"

"Is it waterproof?"

"Of course it is." McCoy brought out another blanket and threw it haphazardly over Jim, then found a pillow in the same closet and threw that at him as well.

"Will you quit? I'm not an invalid!"

"There's nothing wrong with extra blankets, I want to keep your temperature up, and don't be a child in front of your advisor." McCoy threw a grin at Chris, who grinned back, while Jim flailed under the blankets until he freed his head and arms. "Now, if you gentlemen don't mind, I haven't had a shower since yesterday morning, so I'm going to go scrub. Back in a sec." He disappeared into one of the bedrooms.

"Are you staying for pizza, Captain?" Jim asked, still arranging the covers.

"Sure. I'm guarding you guys against late night reporters."

"Oh, good." Jim grinned. "Those guys can be sneaky, you know."

"Oh yeah, I know."

The door buzzed and Jim struggled out of the blanket cocoon to answer it and take the pizza. McCoy re-emerged from his room at that moment and immediately shouted him back onto the couch. The golden hair disappeared again beneath the blankets.

The pizza turned out to be delicious.

"Where is this from?" Chris asked, looking at the unfamiliar box.

"Totino's, downtown." McCoy answered. Jim was busy stuffing his face. "Jim goes explorin' on weekends, can't keep still for an hour. He found the place a couple weeks after the semester started and we keep it on speed comm."

"It's really good, I'll have to remember that." Chris saved the number from the box on his comm unit.

They munched the pizza, talking about life in the dorms and how lucky these two were to have avoided it. Before long Jim was dozing off, soda in hand, so McCoy took it away from him and sent him to bed.

"No shenanigans," he admonished as Jim's door closed.

"Look," Chris said softly, unsure whether Jim would eavesdrop or just go to sleep. "Before you look at his files, you need to know that there's some really nasty stuff in there."

"I had gathered that." said McCoy. He frowned. "I've already got my own professional opinion about his childhood. Plus, the tricorder readings tonight showed some weird stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like a serious gap in his bone development, which would indicate either a period of disease—the likes of which nobody gets anymore—or a period of starvation." McCoy looked troubled, and his expression darkened considerably when Chris nodded briefly.

"You've been granted access to his entire record, uncensored. It's long and it's ugly, but Marcus thinks that with your psych background you'll be able to keep him on track if he strays. I told him that we didn't need to be putting any additional pressures on you, as you're a student too, but..." Chris waved one hand in a helpless gesture.

McCoy shrugged it off. "I was in a funk when I came here, and Jim pulled me out of it. If I gotta pick him up and rinse the puke off of him after a bender, it's the least I can do."

"I don't think you understand." Chris leaned forward. "Some of this isn't the kind of thing most people just get over. If it had been just one thing, or just another one, maybe. But shit rolls downhill and Jim Kirk grew up in a shit storm." McCoy's expression soured even more, if that was possible, but he stayed silent. "He'll have to hit the bottom sometime. According to his therapists he never dealt with a lot of it properly, but somehow he still passed all of Starfleet's evals. So, either he's a psychopath and was less affected by it than a normal person would be... or he's just a really good actor."

"Could be he was young enough to bounce back." McCoy looked speculative, if doubtful. "Kids are a lot more adaptable than adults, they assimilate stuff a lot easier than we do."

"That may be true as well, and I'm sure you'll come to your own diagnosis." Chris stood. "I just wanted to warn you that it's not pretty, and Jim probably doesn't want you looking at it."

"Yeah, he told me that. I can't avoid it, unless you want to assign somebody else."

"I really don't. Besides the convenience of you being his roommate, Marcus looked over your records himself. He says there are doctors we have with more experience, but none who are more qualified, especially for a case like Jim's. And besides, you've proven your competence already." He shook his head, grinning. "That thing with the laughing gas was pure genius."

McCoy grinned back. "My daddy taught me to use all the resources at my disposal, sir."

"And you do it well." Chris nodded. "Also I need to remind you that Jim's file is confidential, and parts of it are one hundred percent classified. Your eyes only, nobody else, not even other doctors, not even your boss, no one. If you need a second opinion on something, you can reach me at any time and I'll find somebody with clearance." He handed his card to McCoy, who stashed it away.

"Goddamn," drawled the doctor. "I told Jim I was too tired to look at it tonight, but now the suspense is killin' me."

"Yeah, you probably want to wait until daylight. There's enough nightmare fuel in there for weeks." Chis turned to the door. "I'll be in touch to make sure he's doing ok. Call me if you guys need anything at all."

"Right you are, Captain."

He caught a glimpse of McCoy as he left, still standing by the couch with a pinched look on his face. Chances were, he'd already formed a fairly accurate assessment of Jim based on the kid's behavior. Chris knew from experience that he didn't talk about his family or his childhood to anyone. Maybe McCoy could change that. At the very least, Chris knew that the young Captain-to-be couldn't have been in better hands.


	7. Chapter 7

Leonard awoke to a small noise from the living room, estimating that it must be well past midnight. He hadn't been in a very deep sleep, even though after hardly having slept the night before he knew he should have been. Alas, his on-call habits had taken over, and he roused easily knowing that he had a patient only a few meters away in the other room. The readouts on Leonard's bracelet showed that Jim was fine and everything was within normal range, but he was definitely awake and moving around.

He lay in silence for a few minutes, hoping the kid would go back to bed. Jim had slept some while he was at the hospital all day, but he hadn't hit REM sleep for more than a few minutes. Hospitals were too noisy and busy for most patients to really get any rest, which was one reason Leonard avoided admitting them if at all possible. Forgetting surgery and drugs, the best healer out there in the universe was still a good, deep sleep. For those with human physiology, anyway.

Ten minutes passed. From the light creeping under the doorway, Leonard knew that Jim was still up.

Dammit. Time to go scold a brat.

He padded softly to the door and peeked out. Jim was still in regulation pajamas, wrapped up in one of the blankets from the couch. He sat slumped at the computer terminal, probably checking up on the lessons he'd missed that day and starting the assigned homework.

"Kid." he called. "You're supposed to be asleep."

Jim jumped, startled, then looked guilty.

"Sorry Bones." he answered softly. "Didn't mean to wake you up."

"S'fine." Leonard sidled over, shut off the terminal. "But go back to sleep. You have all weekend for homework."

"I know," Jim pulled the blanket closer around himself. "I slept for a while, but I woke up and now my brain won't shut off."

"I know the feelin', kid, but you can't stay up all night."

"I slept at the hospital all day, I'll be fine."

"You barely entered stage 2, and that's not good enough. Go lay down and count backwards from a million."

"I can't!" Jim burst out in frustration. "I've been starting at the chrono for an hour and a half. Don't you think I haven't tried?"

"Well staring at a lighted screen will trick your brain into thinking it's daytime, and screw up your circadian rhythm." Leonard headed toward the replicator. "You'll fuck up your sleep cycle and you'll suffer for it on Monday morning."

"Ya think I don't know that?" Jim stood, flopped into one of the recliners in despair. "Look, this is just... a thing. It happens after hospital stays, I can't wind down for more than a couple hours at a time. It's fucking annoying, but 'll be back to normal in a week."

Leonard punched up a small glass of chocolate milk in the replicator, modified to contain high levels of tryptophan and melatonin. Ah, it was good to be a grad student. He'd gotten permission to program in a few extra things the first week they'd stayed here. This was one of his favorite things for intermittent insomnia; the melatonin would induce sleep, the tryptophan would convert to serotonin within a few hours and help stabilize sleep patterns and mood. Best of all, neither of the two were drugs.

"Drink this, and then we'll shut your brain off." He handed the little glass to Jim, who squinted at it with suspicion. "No drugs, cross my heart. Drink it."

"I thought you were supposed to drink warm milk for sleeping, not chocolate milk." Jim sipped a little, then downed the whole six ounces quickly. Leonard took the glass back to the sink.

"That's a myth, and warm milk tastes nasty anyway."

"It really does. How do you think you're going to shut my brain off?"

"I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, in case you haven't figured that out." Leonard grabbed the remaining blanket from the couch and wrapped it around himself. "Scoot, kid."

Jim scrunched over, and Leonard plopped into the recliner with him. They both fit in fairly easily. Good to be a grad student, indeed.

"I'm not drunk enough to snuggle with you, Bones."

"Shut it. You're going to fall asleep in about ten minutes, so get cozy." Leonard reached down the side of the chair, feeling under the bottom edge until he found the lever he was looking for. The chair tipped backward when he found it, and Jim gasped in surprise. It rocked easily forward again with their combined weight.

"Don't get your hopes up." Jim squirmed a little, found a comfortable position. Leonard reclined the chair back some, so that they were halfway lying down.

"I don't need hopes, I have absolute certainty." Leonard put one foot down on the floor, to keep the chair rocking in a steady motion.

"Pfft."

"Don't pfft me. I'll even make a bet. If I win, you stay on that couch all day tomorrow without whining."

"And if I win?"

"If you win, we'll go out and get waffles at lunchtime."

"Fine, you're on. Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes." Leonard craned his head to look at the glowing chrono. "Computer, lights off. You better be prepared to keep your mouth shut for the next 24 hours, brat."

"Whatever, this is not going to work."

"Of course it will. People have been rocking babies to sleep for thousands of years, and they don't do it for fun, they do it because it works."

"I'm not a newborn."

"So? We stop rocking because they get too big, not because it stops working."

"Whatever, this is stupid."

"Your face is stupid."

"My face is gorgeous."

"You just keep on tellin' yourself that."

"Maybe I will."

Leonard took Jim's lack of a sufficiently witty retort as an indicator that his brain was, in fact, starting to slow down, in spite of the kid's earlier protest. There was silence for a couple of minutes, during which he could practically hear his reluctant new patient fighting sleep.

"Bonesss?"

"Hmmm?"

"The fuck did you do to me?"

Jim's speech was a little sloppy, as if he were forcing the words out through a haze. Which, in fact, he probably was. Leonard smiled smugly in the darkness.

"Just worked a little science on ya, kid. No worries."

Leonard listened as Jim's breath slowed and evened out, keeping the chair rocking steadily until he was sure he'd achieved stage two sleep. It was only then that he saw the flaw in his master plan; he couldn't get up from the chair without the possibility of waking Jim.

Crap.

His back wasn't going to thank him for this in the morning, but he would have to stay here. At least they would both get some sleep this way. On the bright side, studies had long proven that people slept longer and more deeply with another person than alone. Leonard called softly for the computer to turn off all the alarms and raise the apartment's temperature by a few degrees, then he let himself drift off.

He woke up again with sunlight shining in his face, Jim still dozing next to him in the chair. The chrono on the wall said that it was past nine hundred. Good lord, they both must have been exhausted. Leonard looked at the readout on his bracelet: everything normal, but Jim's oxygen saturation was lower than he wanted it to be. He scrunched over as best he could and wriggled out of the chair, letting Jim roll into the middle in a burrito of blankets.

He had enough hypos of tri-ox to last the weekend, which should cover Jim's needs. He pulled one out of the bag, released the safety and pulled the trigger gently against the exposed neck. Jim hummed softly but didn't wake, and Leonard left him there to sleep until he woke up on his own. It was past time for breakfast, so he dialed up coffee and eggs for himself and ate quickly before hitting the shower.

"How the fuck did you do that?" was the greeting he received upon exiting his room, now dressed in 'fleet sweats. Jim was still in the recliner, bundled up with a PADD in his hands.

"Like I said, being rocked puts people to sleep." Leonard dialed up another cup of coffee, and then one for Jim, as he spoke. "It isn't an old wives' tale or an urban legend, the motion actually alters your brain waves into a more regular pattern. Been well known for a few hundred years."

Jim just stared at him skeptically.

"Ok," he admitted, handing one of the coffees to Jim, "the chocolate milk might have been tainted. But it's drug free, non habit forming. Setting two-two-oh-nine. You can have a glass anytime you can't fall asleep."

"... what if I'm drunk?"

"Makes no difference." Leonard waved a hand absently. "There's nothing in it to interfere with the alcohol, although if you're drunk enough to puke I would advise against it, since you might suffocate."

"...right."

"You eaten anything yet?"

"No, I haven't been able to escape your blanket prison."

Leonard leaned back over the replicator and called up a plate of strawberry pancakes that he knew Jim liked. He handed the plate over, surreptitiously confiscating the PADD. While Jim ate, he went over to the terminal to check his messages. Admiral Marcus wanted a report detailing every nuance of Grady Ross Memorial's mistakes, including possible long-term repercussions on Jim's health.

Leonard would be only too happy to oblige, of course. The truth was that Grady Ross's EMTs had no way of knowing about Jim's allergies, even though they should have easily identified anaphylaxis and responded accordingly with epinephrine. Instead, they'd pumped him full of drugs he was allergic to, stopped his heart, then restarted it and let him spend a whole night strapped to a bed in a moderate state of allergic shock.

If the ER doctors had taken the kid's fingerprint they could have called up his (admittedly censored) medical records and seen the same short history and list of allergies that Leonard had been looking at yesterday. Even if, after that, they still hadn't recognized the initial allergic reaction, they could have avoided doing any further damage by putting him on a regular saline drip and contacting Starfleet.  _First do no harm, assholes._  Even though Jim hadn't had ID on him, any idiot could recognize the casual cadet blacks he'd been wearing at the time.

Idiots, all of them. But speaking of Jim's medical records...

"Jim, we gotta talk."

"Damn it."

"Yeah, yeah," Leonard grumbled. Jim had made the pancakes disappear quickly and struggled out of the blankets to return the plate to the replicator. It would be dismantled on a molecular level and re-formed from new matter when more food was called for. He then flopped down onto the couch with a dramatic moan.

"Ok," he said finally. "What are we talking about?"

Leonard sat on the coffee table, facing Jim. "Pike seems to think there's some deep dark shit in your medical files."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"And since I've been officially ordered to be your doctor, I can't avoid reading your files."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"And I know you don't want me reading them, but if it makes you feel any better I've probably already guessed a lot of it based on your behavior and some stuff from the full tricorder scan I took last night."

Jim squinted at him, looking irritated. "Like, guessed what?"

Leonard raised an eyebrow at him, in challenge. "You really want to do this?"

"Do your worst," the kid replied, "You're going to see it all anyway."

"Fine." Leonard crossed his arms. "You're afraid of being alone. You probably get drunk so you can forget stuff, get in fights so you can feel like you're in control, and have sex because you like being touched. But of course, you can't just ask some girl at a bar to cuddle with you, because that would be an offense to your masculinity. At the same time you're afraid of getting attached to anyone, so you never find yourself in long-term relationships, and therefore anonymous sex remains your only option for prolonged physical contact with another person. How'm I doin' so far?"

Jim just moaned and covered his face with a throw pillow.

"You probably like to be touched because you didn't get enough physical affection from your parents when you were little, and that also explains the electronic cigarette we found in your jacket yesterday. Oral fixation can be a symptom of emotional neglect. You don't do drugs, even though your type usually does, because that would compromise your ability to remain in control of the situation and you can't stand to not be in control. I'll go ahead and guess domestic abuse, at the hands of someone other than your parents."

Jim didn't move or respond at all.

"You've also got some uncool stuff going on with your bone density, which could indicate serious disease, but I think that's unlikely since you haven't got any other long-term effects or immune indicators. You probably had a period of near-starvation sometime in the last ten years. That puts you at risk for eating disorders and bone fractures."

The silence hung in the air between them for several uncomfortable moments, but Leonard couldn't back out now. He didn't have anything reassuring to say about the contents of Jim's file, however...

"You understand that your bone density is fixable, right?" he reached out, tugged at the sleeve of Jim's sweats.

A muffled "No." came from under the throw pillow.

"It is. I can't make you, but if you'd put up with treatment it would probably save you a lot of broken bones in the future, and it'll save you from being treated for osteoporosis when you're old. Surely somebody has talked to you about this before."

Jim's face emerged from under the pillow, red with embarrassment.

"I don't want to be stuck in one of those giant osteo-tubes, and a regular bone knitter sucks enough without being subjected to a full body—"

"Nah, kid." Leonard waved the thought away with one hand, sliding off the table to sit on the floor next to the couch so that he was eye level with Jim. "You're young enough that your bones can still recover on their own. From your numbers, a monthly injection of cal-six with vitamin D would put you back on track within a year. Should'a been done already."

Jim stared at the ceiling. "Injections." he said.

"Once a month. You'd get a bone density scan in a year, just to make sure you're within a normal range. No drugs, no bone knitter cubicles, no down time."

Jim turned onto his side on the couch, facing Leonard. He wasn't exactly opening up, but at least he was talking, which was an improvement. Even so, this was unfamiliar territory for both of them, and Leonard wasn't sure how far he could press.

"You can think about it and we'll talk about it again sometime. It's not urgent, you won't be in any real danger for years."

Jim nodded thoughtfully, but didn't say anything. Damn, this was tricky. Leonard was willing to read the file and keep his professional opinions to himself—for a while. At some point they would have to talk about it, and every day they put it off increased the likelihood of a serious meltdown. The two didn't disagree often, beyond trivial things, but Leonard already knew that both of them had anger management problems.

Maybe the best thing he could do here, since Jim needed to be in control, was to give him control. Or at least the illusion of it, since at the end of the day neither of them had any choice anymore. Starfleet owned their asses.

"Why don't you go ahead and tell me what the worst thing in those files is, and then it'll be over with before I even start reading. Like ripping off a band-aid."

Jim pressed his lips together in thought. "The worst thing is debatable. Depends on which therapist you ask."

That was possibly the most perfect setup Leonard had ever heard.

"I ain't askin' a damn therapist, I'm askin'  _you_." He put one hand firmly on Jim's forearm, which was squeezing the throw pillow to his chest. "This is  _your_  file. What do  _you_  think is the worst thing in there?"

Jim's arms tightened perceptibly around the pillow. Leonard didn't add any more pressure, but also didn't remove his hand.

And then Jim dropped the last bombshell he'd ever expected:

"I was on Tarsus IV."

For a second Leonard's whole consciousness zeroed in on those five words, until he realized that Jim was actually shaking him.

"Jesus  _fuck_ ," he heard himself say.

"It's okay to react, Bones," Jim was saying, mock-seriously. "You're in a safe place."

"Shit," he cursed, letting go of Jim's arm. "Sorry. That uh, wasn't what I expected you to say."

"What  _were_  you expecting?"

"Hell, I don't know." Leonard stood up. He definitely needed a drink. "The way Pike talked, maybe a couple of years in a juvie offenders camp or something. Fuck." He found bourbon in one of the cabinets, poured a healthy measure out into a glass and downed it.

"Well it  _was_  meant to be punishment, so you were on the right track."

"Yeah, he said your mom had you sent away because you were wild. He didn't say where." Shit.

"I was a trainwreck, but I came back a lot worse."

"Ok." Leonard poured a full glass of bourbon, then poured a second one and brought it back to Jim. "We might need this. Any particular reason you were a trainwreck?"

"A few reasons. Don't want to talk about it." Jim threw back half the glass of bourbon. He could have grown up to be an accomplished alcoholic, if he had wanted to. "Let's just say I stopped talking for two years, set a barn on fire and drove my dad's antique car off a cliff."

"And I'm sure all of those things seemed like good ideas at the time."

"Exactly."

"All right. I'm going to go sit over there with my PADD and read your files and write some reports." Leonard dragged the blankets out of the recliner and threw them over Jim again, who flapped around in frustration before getting them organized. "You do some homework, or watch tv, and rest, for fuck's sake. If you decide you do want to talk about it, I'll be here all day."

"Ok, just..." Jim stopped.

"Just what?"

"Later. In a couple of hours." He stopped again, hugging that same pillow to his chest. "I might have a panic attack. Just don't make a thing out of it, ok? It'll be fine."

Leonard couldn't think of any answer except "Ok," and they both settled in to their respective tasks.


	8. Chapter 8

"Lost your pancakes?"

Jim nodded weakly, but otherwise refrained from moving out of his spot on the floor of his bathroom. It was uncomfortable and hard, but blessedly cool and dark. Bones was hovering in the doorway that led back to Jim's bedroom. Jim kept his eyes squeezed shut, in anticipation of the light coming on so Bones could inspect him, but it didn't happen.

So there he lay, curled in a ball, breathing in for a count of five and out for a count of five. Not that it made a difference, since he'd been doing it on and off for the last two hours. At least it kept him from hyperventilating, but it didn't seem to calm the anxiety whatsoever.  _Bones had seen his records._  He felt weak and nauseated still. It was well past lunchtime now, but Jim doubted if he would eat anything for the rest of the day.

This hadn't happened in years, literally. There had been a time, right after Tarsus IV, when it had been a weekly occurrence. Now he was a grown-up, dammit, and he had gotten a grip on himself. Right? Fuck, but Bones read his file, including the  _classified parts_. Shit, shit shit. Tarsus IV. Frank. Suicide. Bulemia. Self-harm. God, it was fucked up. Clearly Starfleet thought he was fit, but Bones didn't need to deal with that kind of baggage.

Breathe. A few minutes went by, and Jim heard movement again in the doorway. Something ice cold and damp landed on the side of his head and he jerked in surprise.

"Listen," came Bones's voice, low and close to his face. Jim opened his eyes, made out the doctor's shape kneeling over him in the darkness that was still too bright. "I'm not making a thing out of it, but you had a serious cardiac event less than 48 hours ago. I need your heart rate to slow down soon, or you're going to wind up back at the hospital."

Now that Bones mentioned it, Jim became dimly aware of an urgent beeping coming from far away. The monitor bracelet's alarm was going off, but Bones must have left it in the other room. It would have been too loud in here. He opened his mouth to answer, but couldn't articulate anything intelligent so he shut it again. Bones was shushing him anyway.

"Don't talk, just keep breathing. Okay if I touch you?" Jim nodded, and then Bones was dragging him upright, stripping off his shirt. "We're gonna scoot over," he whispered, "but you don't worry 'bout anything but breathin', understand? You're doin' it just right, and that's your only job."

Jim did as he was told, and went where Bones pushed him.  _Fuck_ , Bones had read his files. He wanted to resist, out of embarrassment at the whole situation, but he knew from experience that attempting to do or say anything at this point would make things worse. He could only hope to stave off full blown panic by focusing carefully inward, because he did not want to wind up a shaking, sobbing mess in front of his roommate.

Jim yelped loudly when a spray of cold water came down on him, but Bones admonished him to keep breathing and so he did. He realized that Bones had manhandled him into the shower, that he was sitting there with his knees drawn up and his head between them, cool water falling gently over his head and bare shoulders. He breathed.

It seemed like a long time before his heart stopped pounding in his chest. It probably wasn't as long as he thought it was; he knew his sense of time skewed when this happened. He shifted, pressed his hands over his face, and finally stopped counting to see if he could breathe normally. He realized the water pouring down on him wasn't actually cold, it was lukewarm and comfortable. He must have been overheated for it to have felt so cold when it first started.

Jim pushed his wet hair back from his face and finally opened his eyes. Fuck. Bones was sitting there with him, cross legged, soaking wet.  _Fucking Bones was sitting there with him._ In the floor of the shower stall in Jim's bathroom. In the dark. In sopping wet sweats.

"Better?" he drawled softly, gripping Jim's wrist and peering at the numbers flashing across the bracelet. Jim muttered an apology, but Bones quickly cut him off. "Don't be so dramatic, on the Richter Scale of panic attacks that was barely a three. I'm hardly impressed." Jim nodded dumbly. He moved to get up, but Bones tightened the grip around his wrist. "Just wait a few minutes. If you get dizzy and fall in here you could hurt yourself, everything is tile."

Fine, whatever. Jim sat obediently while Bones turned the water off and together they dripped dry for a few minutes. Glad that the episode hadn't turned into anything worse, Jim could feel his embarrassment fading. This kind of thing was rare enough these days that he didn't have to worry about it. Bones reading his files had been a powerful trigger, but now he found himself more annoyed than anything. He was wet and chafing, getting a little chilled, and he could feel the post-adrenaline headache beginning.

Bones finally stood up and squeezed out of the shower, throwing a towel back over Jim and ordering him to dry off and get dressed. Jim could hear him squelching across to the living room in his soaked sweats, and repressed a chuckle. He climbed out carefully, wary of vertigo, stripped his own sweats off and dried quickly. He wrestled himself into clean underwear and pajamas, already knowing that Bones wasn't going to let him out of the apartment.

Bones was already dried and dressed in the kitchenette when Jim slunk through his bedroom door. He pointed wordlessly at the couch and Jim threw himself at the blanket nest as theatrically as he could. His muscles felt weak and rubbery, and the ache in his head was steadily increasing. He tried not to flinch at a slight sting and hiss at the side of his neck, but rolled over to scowl at Bones, who was tossing one of the tri-ox hypos in the trash. He pressed a mug of something warm into Jim's hands.

Jim squinted at the golden liquid with suscipcion."What the hell is this, Bones?"

"Chicken broth, genius. It's hot, and you need to be hydrated but you don't need any caffeine."

Not to mention that it probably had a ton of calories. Yeah, Bones thought he was so smooth, but Jim was onto him. Sly bastard. Jim settled against the arm of the couch, just noticing that all the lights were off and the only illumination was from the sun shining through the windows. And Bones's monitor bracelet was lying on the table, because the doctor had known better than to take the noisy thing into the bathroom with Jim.

Ok fine, so Bones knew stuff about panic disorder and sensitivity to light and sound, big fucking deal.

Jim took a sip of the broth, which was pretty good, goddammit.

Bones was leaning over him again, pressing warm fingers to his forehead and throat.

"You feel any pain or pressure in your chest?"

Jim shook his head.

"Headache." Not a question.

"Shit, Bones, how do you even know that?" Jim almost moaned in frustration. Maybe Bones was a closet telepath.

"You're squinting at the broth, dumbass. Give me your left hand."

"No."

"I'm not going to stick you with anything, just give it here."

Jim stuck his hand out, trying to resent it as much as possible. He knew this was his moody teenager self coming out because he was tired and grouchy, but he was too wrung out to be an adult right now. Bones sighed in annoyance and flopped onto the couch next to Jim, dragging him closer and practically appropriating his whole left arm. Jim squinted studiously into his mug of broth.

"Kid. I realize I would have been your last choice, because who the fuck wants to live with their doctor?" he pinched Jim's hand, pressing into the soft flesh at the base of the thumb with almost bruising force. "But we're stuck like this, and I need you to trust that I'm not gonna do anything that's not strictly necessary, and I'm not gonna do anything you tell me not to do. In exchange, I will trust that you aren't being an asshole on purpose."

Fucking great, Mr. Psychiatrist here had already read the bits about Jim being restrained with a feeding tube after Tarsus IV. Hey, it wasn't his fault they'd wanted to feed him nasty nutritionally complete mush. Completely unappetizing, and to this day he maintained that having a feeding tube forced upon him had been un-called-for. It wasn't the original source of Jim's hatred of doctors, but it was definitely a contributing factor.

"Bullshit, you've already done plenty of stuff that wasn't strictly necessary." Jim wanted to yank his hand away, but frankly he didn't have much real anger behind his words. And he was kind of curious about what Bones was trying to accomplish with the thumb massage.

"Like what?"

"Like the laughing gas. The thing with the tape on my arms."

"Those were necessary. I did take oaths, you know, and I stick by them, unlike some people."

"Right, right, first do no harm."

"Actually, common misconception. The Hippocratic Oath never says that. Give me your other hand." Jim obeyed, setting the now-cold broth aside. Bones gripped his right hand in the same place, applying pressure between his thumb and palm. "What I actually swore was,  _with regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage."_

"The best diet?" Jim raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, you're gonna have to lay off the beer and pizza. Sorry."

"Damn it!"

"That's not to say I've never... interpreted the rules loosely when it suited me, but my first concern, once a patient is out of mortal danger, is that the patient is no longer in pain or distress. That means the laughing gas was very strictly necessary."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Interpreted loosely, you say?"

Bones looked away, letting go of his hand. "I'll tell you 'bout it sometime, when I'm drunk enough. Point is, first do no harm, second ease suffering. Head better?"

Jim blinked, then stared down at his hands stupidly. The headache was gone.

"... the fuck did you do?"

"Magic." Bones got up, snatching the cup of broth and carrying it back to the replicator.

"No, Bones, for serious." Jim got up to follow him, but was somehow tangled in the sneaky blanket nest and was still fighting for freedom when Bones returned with two glasses of ginger ale. Rolling his eyes, he helped Jim arrange himself comfortably on the couch.

"Acupressure," he finally said. "Practicing medicine ain't always about  _medicine_ , kid."

"I see. You really do have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, huh?"

Bones settled on the farther end of the couch couch with his glass of soda, facing Jim. "All the tricks. I come from a long line of doctors, and back when my ancestors were patchin' folks up they didn't have dermal regenerators and fancy antibiotics. They had to make do with what they did have, and they passed all that stuff down through the generations. Even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the deep south, there were places without real hospitals. So making do kinda became the family motto." he shrugged.

"Very old school." He took a sip of the ginger ale, which he'd never liked particularly but it wasn't bad.

"There's lots of stuff you can do without chemistry and equipment. For example," he held up his own glass, "ginger is mildly anti-emetic."

"It's what, now?"

"Anti-emetic. It stops you from vomiting. Not real effective, but better than placebo."

"Oh. That's why people drink it when they're sick?"

"Well, they drink it when they're sick because it's just what people drink when they're sick. Most folks don't know it was originally used because of the ginger. Somehow it became a cultural thing. Barf? Ginger ale. It's easier, safer cheaper and less invasive than meds."

"Weird." Jim said, and took another sip. The nausea had mostly passed, anyway. "I've never met a doctor who wouldn't rather stick me with a hypo."

"Once upon a time, the game was to use as little medication as you could get away with and still make the patient better. Doctors these days forget that, they go straight for what's quick and easy, which is synthesized drugs and technology. Judging by your records, I see you've run into plenty of those types."

"Yeah," Jim breathed out, looking away. "Sorry."

Bones raised an eyebrow. "What the fuck are  _you_  apologizing for?"

"I dunno. I'm difficult, I guess."

"Lots of people are difficult. Hell, doctors themselves make the worst patients out of any demographic. Being difficult ain't an excuse for half the shit in your files."

"But—"

"No buts, kid." Bones shook his head. "You were a minor, and you aren't responsible for anything that was done to you, no matter how much of a little shit you were."

Jim was too tired now to argue, and he really didn't want to talk about it anyway. But why...?

"Aren't you going to interrogate me about it?" he blurted out, then wished he hadn't. He blamed his sudden drowsiness for his lack of judgement.

Bones shook his head. "Assumed you didn't want to talk about it."

Jim nodded. "Right."

"I do have one, tangentally related question though. Why do you not wear one of those alert bracelets, or a necklace?"

Jim groaned. "I had one, when I was a kid. Never made a difference, nobody in the ER ever looks at it. Besides, by now the list is so long there's no way they could print all that stuff on one."

"If I ordered one for you that just said 'no drugs' on it, would you wear it?"

Jim considered it, but said "No." He wasn't sure why he didn't want to, or what it would hurt, or if he were subconsciously testing Bones to see what he would do.

"That's fine," Bones said smoothly, not missing a beat, "then would you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"I want you to carry your epi-pen in your boot, not your pockets."

Jim cocked his head to one side, wondering what difference it would make.

"You're a lot less likely to take your boots off when you're out than your jacket. I'll even order you one that's disguised as an ink pen, in case anybody sees it." Bones was peering at him now, and reached up to adjust the blankets. Jim wanted to protest, but couldn't bother. "It would make me feel better. Humor an old man, okay?"

There was exactly zero reason for Jim to argue this one, and he didn't have the energy anyway. And how did Bones know he didn't want anyone seeing his epi-pen? Oh, right, Mr. Psychiatrist. It was lucky that he'd avoided letting Bones himself see it for all this time.

"Okay." he agreed as resentfully as he could, and Bones patted his arm.

"Thanks, kid." Bones took the ginger ale out of his hand and set it on the table. "You look beat."

"... really sleepy all a' sudden," Jim managed, and Bones was standing and pressing him down into the pillows. "Sorry," he tried, but Bones just patted his head in amusement.

"Adrenaline crash, you're fine. Go ahead and take a nap, and we'll go get waffles for dinner when you wake up."

Jim shook his head, but then wasn't sure whether he'd actually managed to move it or not. He didn't want to eat. Thinking about Bones reading his files made him think about Tarsus IV, and as soon as food crossed his mind the smell of rotten grain reached his nose. It was only in his head, but it destroyed his appetite with a definitive swiftness.

"According to your oaths, are waffles the best diet for me?" Jim teased, even though his eyes were falling shut against his will.

"They are tonight. Lots of calories, and I know you'll eat them without whining."

"Not hungry," he slurred, and couldn't keep his eyes open. The blanket nest was undeniably cozy...

"That's okay," Bones answered, "We'll get them to go, and then you'll have some if you change your mind. But later. Go to sleep now, kid."

The order was unnecessary, because Jim was already gone.

 


	9. Chapter 9

The waffle place was busy, but of course it was a Saturday night in a college town. Leonard had chosen this one specifically because it was a little farther from campus than most students liked to venture, so there were only a couple of 'fleet suits in the crowd. Jim was a little pale but steady on his feet, so Leonard settled him at a booth near the front while he went to the counter to place their order. Eight waffles, plus butter and syrup, fruity topping and a couple containers of whipped cream. It was too much, but he expected that Jim would fall asleep after he ate,  _if_  he ate, and this way they'd have leftovers for breakfast instead of replicated crap.

He turned back to see Jim, who was engaged in conversation with an older cadet who had sat at the booth across from him. Leonard didn't recognize the dark haired man, didn't know if he was in their class or above it. He was older than Jim, but younger than Leonard, dressed in casual cadet blacks and leaning toward Jim over the table in a weirdly aggressive manner. Leonard frowned. He knew Jim had a tendency to get drunk and pick fights, but he was completely sober and they were in a breakfast joint, not a bar.

Should he intervene? Jim had probably had enough of Leonard poking into his business in the last day or two, and wouldn't welcome his presence in whatever unexpected altercation was taking place. On the other hand, the kid wasn't exactly at his best and if this escalated to violence things could get ugly. Plus the emotional rollercoaster he'd been riding for the last few hours didn't leave Leonard with a high expectation that Jim would be able to control himself if this guy was provoking him. He had just taken a step toward the booth when some weird shit went down.

First, the older guy reached across the table and ran his fingers possessively through Jim's hair. Ok,  _that_  was fucking weird. Leonard knew that he was bisexual, but usually Jim did the flirting in any given situation. He had literally never seen anybody put the moves on Jim. Secondly, a tall Vulcan in a 'fleet faculty uniform appeared by the booth as if out of thin air. Leonard stopped in his tracks as he saw the Vulcan lean forward and speak to the two cadets, and  _that_  was weird because Vulcans tended to be extreme introverts. Leonard got over his surprise and moved forward, arriving at the booth just as the older cadet beat a hasty retreat out the front doors.

"You okay, kid?" Leonard leaned over the table, scrutinizing Jim and then the Vulcan. His jet black hair was cut in that same sharp bowl cut all Vulcans wore, though his skin was much lighter than was typical for the species. Maybe an effect of living on Earth, where the sun was less harsh. "Who was that?"

"Uh, nobody." Jim said, changing the subject quickly. "Who are you?" he asked, turning his face up to the stony Vulcan.

"I am Spock, currently professor of Xenolinguistics at the Academy," replied the Vulcan, dark eyes studying Jim carefully. "You are James Kirk. I heard there was some trouble with the press yesterday, and was concerned that Cadet Mitchell was troubling you."

"Wait, I thought Pike said that the faculty didn't know." Leonard said, glancing back at the counter. Their number wasn't up yet. He turned back to face Spock with suspicion.

"The faculty does not, however I am assigned to be Captain Pike's First Officer and as such he keeps me informed of most of his projects."

"Great, I'm a  _project_."

Leonard opened his mouth to scold Professor Spock, but the Vulcan clasped his hands behind his back and said smoothly, "Of course, this is not the terminology that the Captain himself uses when he speaks of you. He thinks of you fondly and is concerned for your safety." Spock tilted his head to once side. "Are you aware that Cadet Mitchell knows your identity?"

Jim's mouth dropped open, but snapped shut again. He nodded his head, paling a little more.

"How do you know that? I thought Vulcans were  _touch_ -telepaths?" Leonard asked, reaching for Jim's wrist to check his pulse. He'd left the apartment on the condition that he not be made to wear the bracelet in public.

"Indeed we are, however Cadet Mitchell appears to have a much higher psi-rating than most humans, who are essentially psi-null. I have been asked to monitor his telepathic behavior intermittently. He was projecting his intentions quite loudly this evening, and I was unable to avoid sensing them. It was most disturbing."

"And what were his intentions, exactly?"

"He was endeavoring to engage Cadet Kirk in a sexual encounter in exchange for his silence. No doubt he discovered your identity and your determination to hide it through his own telepathic powers."

The color rose in Jim's cheeks, and that was more telling than the kid probably realized.

"I also received the impression that this has happened before."

" _Jim_!" Leonard hissed, "That's blackmail!"

Jim pressed both hands over his reddened face, just as the girl behind the counter called Leonard's number. He stepped away to retrieve their food and pay the girl and was back in a handful of seconds. Professor Spock was speaking quietly, bent close to Jim.

"I have already alerted security and can guarantee that Mister Mitchell will not come near you again, however I cannot make any promises about what he will do with regards to the press. I would suggest you return to your dorm and stay there until either Captain Pike or myself contact you. Do not answer your door or let anyone in without confirming their identity."

Jim nodded, sullen. "Look, I know Gary's a scumbag, but he didn't mean any harm."

"Didn't mean any harm my ass!" Leonard exploded, while Spock merely raised a calm eyebrow.

"You cannot possibly believe that such an encounter could be construed as consensual, Cadet Kirk. You should have reported his advances immediately the first time it happened. As far as Starfleet is concerned, you have been assaulted."

"No, I haven't!"

"Jim, shut up." Leonard turned to the Vulcan, ignoring Jim's offended spluttering. "Thanks for your help, Professor. I'm his roommate, so I'll see he gets home safely and we won't leave the apartment until we're told to."

"Very well, Cadet... ?"

"McCoy, Doctor Leonard McCoy, sir." Leonard tugged at Jim's sleeve and the kid got up, looking exceedingly pissed.

"Doctor McCoy, then. I shall leave you to it." Spock nodded at the two of them and disappeared gracefully into the crowd.

"Come on kid, let's get back." Leonard got a grip on Jim's arm and steered him out. Jim came with him, almost docile, as they trudged back to the bus stop.

Jesus fuck, this kid was something else. Knowing what he now knew, Leonard was impressed that the only outward sign most people could see of Jim's troubled life was that he was sometimes an arrogant jackass. It was a cover for a sensitive, damaged kid who had a profound need to take control of his own life. And then here comes this Mitchell douchebag coercing him into sex and taking that control away from him, and goddamn if Leonard was going to stand for that kind of bullshit.

It was lucky that Spock had turned up, because Leonard was absolutely sure that Jim wouldn't have told him what Mitchell had wanted. He needed to send Pike a note, complimenting his First Officer's efficient handling of the situation. Leonard wasn't a fan of Vulcans; they were too logical and callous for his tastes. Spock seemed different, somehow. Maybe spending so much time teaching young humans had rubbed off on him. He had clearly understood that Jim was in distress and dealt with that effectively, if not in the same way a human might have.

They spent the bus ride back in silence. There was one glaring thing that they were obviously going to have to talk about it, but a crowded bus was not the place for it. Jim stared out the window while Leonard scanned the other occupants of the bus warily, wondering how quick a reporter might find them once Mitchell had made the call. It was pretty late; maybe nothing would happen.

Their stop was at the campus, one block from from their apartment. Leonard was pleased to see that Starfleet Security was already patrolling nearby. Spock hadn't been kidding when he'd guaranteed that Mitchell wouldn't be allowed near Jim again. Leonard wondered if Spock would report the previous incident he'd seen in Mitchell's thoughts, and whether or not telepathic contact would be considered permissible evidence at a trial. He also wondered what Spock had said that had made the man disappear so quickly.

Jim probably wouldn't press charges, because it would only draw more attention. However, Spock probably had the power to have Mitchell removed from the Academy at the very least. Leonard suspected the man was a stickler for the rules, like all Vulcans, and would pursue the matter to the farthest extent that he had the power to do so.

They arrived at the apartment without incident and Jim disappeared into his bedroom immediately. Leonard let him be alone for a few minutes while he arranged their food in the refrigerator and called up drinks from the replicator. He wouldn't make Jim talk to him tonight, but he would make sure he put the monitor bracelet back on and took his tri-ox hypo before he fell asleep. He was just wondering how long to let it go when Jim surprised him by emerging and crawling into the blanket nest on the couch.

Leonard brought over a glass of juice, fortified with vitamins and electrolytes, and handed him the monitor bracelet. Jim snapped it around his wrist and nestled into the blankets. Again, Leonard was reminded of a sleepy puppy and resisted the urge to pet the kid as if he were a fluffy golden retriever. Instead he sat on the edge of the couch, his thigh pressed into Jim's back, and pulled the blankets up so that only the fluff of golden hair was exposed.

"So. Mitchell."

Jim squirmed against him. "Yeah." he said.

"Friend of yours?"

"More like the bane of my existence." Jim's voice was muffled against the cushions. "It's pretty much like that pointy-eared know-it-all said."

"He threatened to expose you, and you had sex with him in exchange for him keepin' his trap shut."

Leonard viciously suppressed a wave of anger that he'd been fighting for half an hour. Shouting at Jim wasn't going to do any good. He'd save his rage for Mitchell, if he ever ran across him. He tried to remember any striking physical feature the guy had, but then realized he hadn't really gotten a good look his face. Frustrating.

Jim still hadn't answered.

"You could press charges, you know."

"And attract more attention from the media? No thanks."

"You could report him to the school and he'd be reprimanded in private, maybe even expelled."

"There's no evidence, Bones, and it doesn't matter. Whatever the Vulcan said, it was consensual."

"So you'd have let him fuck you willingly if he  _hadn't_  threatened you?"

No answer.

"That's not consent, kid." Leonard pulled on Jim's arm, maneuvered him into a half-sitting position. "Sit up and drink your juice and let me get your hypo. Do you want me to heat up your waffles?"

"No, thanks."

Everything in Leonard screamed at him to argue with that, but he knew that Jim wouldn't tolerate nagging. Not today, anyway. He drank his juice though, so Leonard dug a hypospray out of the bag and administered it. He then headed for the replicator and called up the chocolate milk again, only this time he stirred in a packet of protein and nutrient powder while Jim finished the juice. He brought it over, muttering about dehydration, while Jim rolled his eyes. But he drank it and settled in. It wasn't late at all, but sleep was as good for recovering from a bad day as it was for recovering from temporary death.

Leonard gave Jim the tv remote and told him to kick his boots off. He would prefer for the kid to sleep in his own bed, but he also knew that Jim didn't want to be by himself. That was why he hadn't stayed in his room for long, even though he'd surely known that Leonard was going to ask him about Mitchell as soon as he came back out.

He settled down at the terminal and checked his messages, then sent one to Pike outlining their mishap at the waffle place. Then he pulled up the outdoor security camera feed that covered the front door. Every dorm room had one, and while they couldn't access the entire dorm's cameras, each cadet could view the feed from the one outside their own door. Jim, of course, had hacked into the system months ago, so they could see every camera on the campus. The kid would be in deep shit if he was caught, but Leonard had learned to have faith in his roommate's computer skills.

Jim was sound asleep. Leonard shut off the tv and took the remote out of Jim's lax hand, pulled the blankets up again and called for the lights off. He checked that the door and windows were locked and pulled the blinds and curtains closed completely. Fuck. Should he sleep? Should he wait until morning and sleep while Jim was awake? Leonard wasn't sure how paranoid to be here. He hadn't really dealt with the press before, especially not sneaky paparazzi press.

Jim had, though, and Jim hadn't given him any specific instructions. Spock had only said not to leave or let anyone in without being contacted. Leonard checked the door again, and made a point to leave the video feed running on the terminal, casting a weird glow across the room. He set himself up in the recliner with a PADD and began reading all the classified articles on Tarsus IV that were linked from Jim's records.

Pike had been right; it was enough to induce nightmares. It wasn't the articles as much as the photos that accompanied them. It turned out that not only was Jim a Tarsus IV survivor, he was one of the Tarsus 9. The nine kids who had seen Kodos in person and might be able to identify him on sight. That explained what the Admiralty had invested in this. It was bad enough that the Kelvin Baby had been a victim of domestic violence and that had somehow gone ignored for years, but for him to have ended up nearly being killed in the greatest massacre of the century? The press would absolutely shit itself.

Not that Leonard would blame them if they did. Jim was orphaned by Starfleet and policy was that Starfleet should have taken responsibility for his care. At the very least he should have been checked up on yearly, had the very best medical and mental health care and a recruiter should have been following him around day and night before he'd even graduated high school. As it was he'd barely survived to adulthood and only random chance had led Pike to find the poor kid getting his ass beaten in a bar in corn country. Starfleet had failed Jim in every way possible.

Leonard woke up to a the door buzzer going off, not realizing he had drifted off. He rubbed his eyes and struggled to get himself upright, then looked at the terminal screen. It showed a short Andorian with a holocam in one hand. Leonard took a screenshot and turned off the sounds on the door intercom. Then he finally looked at the chrono. Fuck, did this asshole know what time it was? Jim hadn't stirred, which was a blessing.

Leonard pulled out his comm and dialed Security. Fuck.


	10. Chapter 10

Chris Pike was not a happy man on Sunday morning.

He woke up fine. He stretched, went for a short jog, and took a shower just fine. He got dressed in civvies just fine, because it was Sunday and he was not one of those nuts who wore the uniform twenty-four/seven (like Marcus, for example.) Fed the dog just fine. Then he checked his messages before he replicated eggs and bacon, and it all went to shit.

He'd gone to bed early the night before and therefore had not read Spock's message about the Waffles-Kirk-Mitchell-Incident until he looked at his comm while eating breakfast. He immediately called Jim's apartment and got hold of McCoy, who looked exhausted and nervous but confirmed that they hadn't answered the door or the comm for anyone.

"Good, keep it that way." Chris said, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Don't make any outgoing calls, just wait until I contact you. Either myself or Spock will come by personally to check up on you, probably this afternoon."

McCoy nodded and signed off. Chris had no doubt that Jim was in capable hands, and if worse came to worst Jim already knew how to deal with the press. There had been a number of incidents in Iowa, reporters following him to school or cornering him on bike rides to ask him weird, invasive questions. It was bad enough that they were allowed to harass him on the anniversary of the Kelvin Disaster, which was now a national day of remembrance, but they'd catch the poor kid on any day of the year just so they could sell a few extra papers.

Things had been better after Tarsus IV, Jim had said. Of course, Jim had been home schooled after he'd come back, so that helped keep him out of public places where he could be targeted. Then as a young adult he'd learned to introduce himself as Jim, just  _Jim_ , and later had fabricated a fake ID good enough to fool even the cops. That had cut down on paparazzi incidents a lot, in spite of his drinking and brawling habits. Of course most of Riverside knew exactly who he was, but their focus had long since waned.

The Admiralty had convened a special meeting when Pike had commed ahead to let them know that the Kirk kid had enlisted. By the time the shuttle had arrived in San Francisco security had been swarming the place and Jim's records had been altered carefully. Of course they had already been highly classified, but now there was a dummy account in place that listed him as simply Jim Kirk. It listed a brief medical history, a list of known allergies, and gave Chris's comm number as an emergency contact. Chris made a mental note to have that amended with McCoy's and Spock's information as well.

He sent off a copy of Spock's message to Marcus and marked it urgent. If Mitchell had leaked Jim's identity to the media there could be a serious situation brewing, and Chris knew that Marcus would stay on top of things. The public would no doubt be interested to learn that the Kelvin Baby was following in his father's footsteps, and would watch his career unfold with great interest. And that would be fine at some vague point in the future, when Jim was securely on board a starship and could not be chased down by goons with cameras. For now, though, the kid would need peace if he were going to complete his three year plan successfully.

Technically speaking, Chris wasn't required to do any sort of work involving students on Sundays. Unfortunately he'd learned early on that when dealing with kids there is never an off day. They weren't  _kid_  kids, but most were straight out of high school and not legal to drink. There was no doubt that one of his advisees would get up to some kind of mischief over a weekend that required Chris to make some phone calls on their behalf at the very least. And really, it wasn't like Jim had brought this particular crisis on himself.

He pulled up outside the apartment and buzzed the door, which opened almost immediately. McCoy must have been watching the monitor like an overly paranoid hawk. He looked a little bedraggled, wearing sweats with socks and not having combed his hair. The doctor practically dragged Chris through the door and locked it behind him. The lights were down, the shades were pulled, and Jim was nowhere to be seen.

"He's in his bathroom, tossing his waffles." McCoy answered Chris's question before he'd asked it.

"Rough morning?"

"Understatement." McCoy pointed at the tv, which was muted but which was currently displaying a photo of Jim with the tagline KELVIN BABY AT STARFLEET ACADEMY? scrolling across the bottom. His tone turned accusatory. "I thought Marcus was dealing with this."

Chris spread his hands in a placating gesture.

"He's doing what he can, but the media are vultures and the paparazzi are a thousand times worse."

"Well somebody better do something, because Jim's stress level is through the roof." McCoy ran a hand through his already mussed hair. "He's puking, he's going to get dehydrated and wind up back in the hospital. He's convinced he's going to get shipped back to Iowa."

"Shipped back to Iowa?" Chris frowned. "For what? It's not like he leaked his own identity to the press."

"You guys told him the Academy wouldn't tolerate any disruptions for the student body, right? So he sees himself as the disruption and figures you're going to kick him out."

"Shit, no, the Admiralty wants him. What they meant was that they weren't going to put up with a bunch of 'look at me, I'm the Kelvin Baby' bullcrap, but so far he's done the opposite of that. Security will keep the media off campus if they have to tail him twenty four seven." Chris motioned toward Jim's open bedroom door. "Tell him he's not going anywhere, don't let him keep freaking out."

McCoy strode through the door and Chris followed at a distance. Jim's room was sparse and tidy, just like the rest of the apartment. Probably partly due to the doctor's influence, and the fact that Jim didn't have a lot of stuff to begin with. He'd turned up at the Academy with nothing but the clothes on his back, after all. The bathroom door was open, revealing Jim on the floor in pajamas. McCoy was leaning over him, talking softly.

Chris kept his distance, resting an elbow on the dresser and checking his comm. He was sure that if he got too close McCoy would tell him off for crowding the patient. The grouchy-beyond-his-years southerner was definitely the best doctor around, but Chris had already decided the man was a damned menace. Overdramatic, perpetually scowling, constantly complaining, always bossing Jim around. Chris kind of liked him.

McCoy coaxed Jim up out of the floor and into a chair in the corner of the bedroom. The kid really did look awful, like he'd aged ten years in a day. There were dark circles under his eyes and a tension in his frame that Chris didn't even know how to interpret. McCoy disappeared for a moment and returned with a cold glass of something clear and fizzy. He handed it to Jim.

"Just take a sip." he ordered, with an air of authority that must only come with the knowledge that  _you know best_ , "And then I want you to lay down."

The fact that Jim didn't argue or try to fight McCoy manhandling him onto the neatly made bed spoke volumes about how shitty he must feel. Chris knew Jim's personality type, and knew perfectly well that he wasn't the sort who would normally show weakness in front of his superiors. Well, weakness was relative; the kid had just been through a major trauma and this was less a matter of weakness and more a matter of simple human durability.

When Jim was more or less settled McCoy motioned Chris out into the living area, ordering down the lights as they left Jim's room. They sat down at the little table in the kitchenette with coffee and doughnuts, McCoy scowling the whole way.

"What are we going to do?" he demanded, dark green eyes flashing. "Security can't follow him around for the next two and a half years, and he's already gotten some creepy messages on his comm from Dickface Mitchell and a handful of other kids, and get this... his  _mom_."

Chris grimaced. Yeah, he'd seen that coming. Winona Kirk had all but gone off the deep end after her husband's death, and even after recovering remained overly critical of everything her younger son said or did. Chris had no idea why, and suspected that her treatment of Jim had an awful lot to do with the cadet's behavior problems as a kid. In fact, it was almost a good thing that she'd spent the majority of his childhood in space; chances were he'd be a lot worse if he'd had to deal with her day in and day out.

"Yeah, ignore her. I'm surprised he doesn't already have her comms blocked."

"That woman is nuts." McCoy asserted, taking a sip of coffee and glaring at the terminal across the room as if it were personally responsible for Jim's mother's attitude. "It's no wonder he's got issues. Was she always like that?"

"No, she wasn't." Chris sighed. It was bad story, and it wasn't his to tell. "Basically, she and George, Sr. were... into each other. Like  _into_  each other, know what I mean? Romeo and Juliet style. Fairy tale romance and all that. She used to smile a lot, before the kids. We served together for a while. Then after Sam was born she got to where she wasn't as happy."

"Sam?" McCoy looked confused.

"Jim's older brother. Ran off when he was about fifteen, Jim was twelve or so. Hasn't been seen or heard from since."

"Sh—okay, that explains a lot."

"Yeah. So she was kind of down on life, and got pregnant again with Jim by accident. Sam was planned, Jim wasn't. But George, he decided that they'd end their tour of duty and come home after Jim was born, and they'd settle for a while in Iowa so she could get over whatever it was that had her in a funk. 'Course, then the Kelvin happened and he died, and she left to go back into the black the very day the doctors cleared her for duty."

"And she left the kids here."

"Right. And the funk she was in just got worse after Jim was born, she was more and more focused on work and less and less likely to come home to the kids when she got leave."

"Hmmm, sounds like she was postpartum."

"Huh?"

"You know, like postpartum depression. Some moms will hit an emotional snag right after their babies are born, nobody's sure why. Something about hormones adjusting and stress, that sort of thing."

"Oh, right. I've heard of that. Baby blues."

"Yeah, exactly." McCoy nodded, thoughtful. "Since you said it started after her first kid was born, and got worse right after Jim, I would make a connection there."

"But surely her doctor's evaluated her for it?"

"Not necessarily. She might not have let on to them that anything was wrong. She probably felt guilty about the way she felt, might have been convinced that she was a bad mother or didn't love her baby enough. It happens. So she bottled it up and got a heavier dose the next time she gave birth. But after Jim was born, even if her doctors were wise to her emotional state, they might have easily written it off as grieving for her lost husband."

"Hmmm. I wouldn't have thought of it that way."

"Of course I can't make a diagnosis without talking to her and getting a full history, but that sort of thing can easily slip right through the cracks. There's even a worse flavor of it, postpartum psychosis. There was this woman back in the twentieth century, Andrea Yates, who was famous for drowning her kids in a bathtub."

Chris choked into his coffee, staring at McCoy incredulously. The way he'd said it, so nonchalantly, was almost disturbing.

"Christ, McCoy!"

"Yep, and her doctors even knew that she was sick. They told her husband to never leave her alone with the kids, and he did anyway, and bam—everything went to hell. Anyway, Jim's mom could be a candidate for a round of serious meds and psychotherapy."

"Yeah, well, I've been thinking that part for years." Chris shook his head sadly. "She used to be a really bright, loving woman. These days, it's best to keep her at arm's length from Jim. She's in the black right now so she's not going to turn up on your doorstep, but don't let him take any live calls and don't respond to anything she says."

"Got it." McCoy nodded. "She needs to get help, but right now I've got to focus on Jim. Maybe you can put in a word to her commanding officer, have her evaluated?"

"Yeah, I can send them a tip." Chris drained the last of his coffee. He could use more, but now that he had seen that Jim was fine, he needed to head out and see what he could do about setting up a security detail on Jim for tomorrow morning and getting a live comm with Marcus. "You guys stay in and rest until tomorrow. The faculty will be informed of the situation, and a standard newsletter will go out to all students regarding harassment. The pap won't make it on campus, even if we can't keep legit reporters out. But nobody's going to be following Jim around except campus security. You might see somebody with a microphone, but they won't come near you."

"What about that guy last night?"

"He must have already been in the neighborhood when Mitchell put the word out. It won't happen again." Chris stood up, poked his head into Jim's room. The kid was face down on the bed, maybe asleep, maybe wallowing in self-pity. "Mitchell is going to be punished to the fullest extent that we can manage. Due to treaties with Vulcan, telepathic communications will stand up in court, so Spock can testify to the bastard's intentions without Jim ever having to be involved."

"That's a relief." McCoy peered in at Jim too, appeared satisfied with what he saw. "I don't think seeing Mitchell again would do much good for his mental state right now. He flat out denies that he's been assaulted, but as far as I'm concerned that's exactly what happened."

"That's how the Admiralty will see it." Chris nodded grimly, striding across the beige carpet toward the door. "But it'll all be classified, and Jim's name won't come out to the public. It'll be a 'Party A' versus 'Party B' type situation, and Mitchell is probably going to wind up doing time. Serves him right, using telepathy like that. I'm sure he's not the only one to abuse it, but I'm just so used to Vulcans, you know?"

"Yeah, they're weirdos but at least they got rules."

"All right, I'm off." Chris shook McCoy's hand. "Look after Jim, lock the door behind me. I'll be in touch."


	11. Chapter 11

They wound up in the recliner again, Leonard keeping up a steady rocking with one foot on the ground. Jim was dozing in and out against Leonard's side. He'd complained about the blanket prison but Leonard wouldn't budge on the issue. He needed to keep his body temperature up, and it was cool this time of year. The kid was overly tired and grouchy, especially after having been confined to the apartment all day long. They'd spent most of it napping, alternately watching the news feeds and resolutely ignoring them.

While Jim had been sleeping after Pike's visit, Leonard had stealthily gone through the kid's room and made all of his electronic cigarettes and associated paraphernalia disappear (all the while preparing a speech about how the things should be banned). Instead he replicated a few dozen suckers, the kind on paper sticks with chocolates in the center. Jim took to them easily, after pouting about his cigarettes, and they seemed a reasonable substitute. Leonard knew it wasn't about the addiction, but rather having something to do with his hands and mouth. Lots of people chewed gum or played holo games to deal with the same problem.

It was a temporary measure, of course. The kid didn't need all that sugar in the long-term, and he didn't need to have his teeth replaced every year either. But it was a coping mechanism, even if Jim didn't realize it, and they would work on it later. There were other, healthier ways to deal with stress and Leonard would help him establish better habits in due time. Right now minimizing the stress itself was key, and Pike seemed to be on the ball.

True to his word, Leonard hadn't allowed Jim to answer the two live comms that came through from Commander Winona Kirk, and Pike seemed to think he'd be able to have them blocked entirely within a few hours. Jim hadn't been real keen on talking to her anyway, and finally admitted that part of the problem was that she hadn't known he'd joined Starfleet until now.

"Yeah, I don't exactly keep in touch with her." he'd said, sipping a chocolate protein shake that Leonard had foisted upon him. "She doesn't write and neither do I."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." Leonard hadn't elaborated, but the truth was that he hadn't spoken to his own mother since before his divorce. She'd cut him out of her life after discovering his role in his father's death. Assisted suicide had been legal for centuries, but remained a hotly debated topic. Leonard's mom had never been anything but loving and supportive when he was growing up, but he knew before the time even came that she would never be able to forgive him for taking away the love of her life. He wondered sometimes if he'd have reacted the same way, in her shoes. But then, the truth was that he and Jocelyn had never been in the kind of love that his parents had been in.

Then there was Jocelyn, who'd drawn away easily while Leonard had been working obsessively to find a cure for his father's illness. Maybe they'd never been that close anyway. Maybe he'd loved her charm and good looks, and she'd loved the money he made and the lifestyle he provided. Maybe they had fooled themselves into thinking that's what love was. Or maybe it had just been Leonard, fooling himself. He'd staunchly refused to psychoanalyze himself, and just chalked it all up to the fact that you can never know another person, not really. Maybe you can't even know yourself. Jocelyn hadn't criticized his decision to end his father's life, but she hadn't supported it either. She'd taken her things, and his things, and everything, and left.

If Leonard were the sentimental type, he'd consider himself and Jim a matched set. Half orphans, half abandoned. But he wasn't, so he didn't. His PADD beeped, causing Jim to jerk awake abruptly. Blue eyes blinked owlishly as the kid looked around and identified his surroundings. Leonard shrugged apologetically, tapping the screen as Jim nestled back down to doze. He glared down at the name that came up on his comms client: Winona Kirk. She was nothing if not persistent, that woman. Still, Leonard deleted the message without reading it. Jim didn't need to be exposed to her right now and Leonard had exactly nothing to say to her. He had no idea how she'd gotten his personal mail code. Maybe she knew people in high places, who presumably didn't know how nuts she was.

A second later the PADD dinged again, this time a text-only comm from Pike:

_McCoy, I got a message through to Winona Kirk's commanding officers and she's being called in for an assessment before her next shift. Her CMO will contact you with his opinion._

Good. If it was what Leonard thought it was, she should have been in talk therapy at a minimum a couple of decades ago. The situation was probably still salvageable with a course of powerful antidepressants, therapy, and perhaps a solid stretch of shore leave. Maybe she and Jim would reconcile; maybe not. It was possible that there was so much hurt and resentment built up between them that the relationship may no longer be viable. On the other hand, people bounced back from the worst kinds of abuse all the time, so it was hard to make a guess.

Time would tell, Leonard figured. He had no way of knowing how many hours it would be before that CMO got in touch with him, so there was no need to hold his breath over it. Jim wiggled in his sleep, smashing his face into Leonard's bicep with almost bruising force and jostling his PADD. Scowling, he put the thing down and tried to scoot away, but the blonde just followed like an overly friendly heat-seeking missile. Hmmm. He sat rocking, listening to the creak of the chair, for another few minutes before he nudged the younger man awake.

"It's about dinner time," he said to the confused face peeking out at him. "What d'ya wanna eat?"

"Not hungry."

"Don't bullshit me, kid. We'll order pizza again, and they've got brownies too. You want brownies?"

"You're gonna let me eat brownies?"

"Just this once. Sausage, onion, mushroom?"

"Fuck, yes."

Half an hour later Leonard answered the door very, very carefully. He wore a hat and sunglasses, even though the sun was almost down, took the pizza quickly and disappeared back inside. He looked ridiculous and he was rude to the poor delivery bot, but oh well. They shouldn't have ordered in anyway, but at least this would get some semi-real food into Jim, who hadn't eaten since his leftover waffles that morning. They arranged the boxes on the coffee table and dug in, watching some space opera rerun that was on the holo tv.

Leonard's PADD dinged while they were digging into the breadsticks. Pike.

_Make up some medical excuse for you both, I need more time to make the student body fear the Wrath of Marcus. You're both officially exempted from exams, so you can blow everything else off until Jan. 8th._

Leonard frowned at it. Jim would be pissed.

_This kid is going to go stir-crazy if you do that to us._

No immediate response. Crap. Okay, he could find some way to entertain Jim for three weeks, right?

He'd worry about it later.

Jim was tearing through another slice of pizza, which was a good sign. Leonard got up for another glass of iced tea from the replicator, and replicated a small container of butter just for the hell of it. He sat back down, grabbed a brownie, and buttered it up.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Leonard turned to find Jim staring at him, eyes wide, a look of barely-concealed disgust on his face.

He took a bite of the hot, buttered brownie and chewed it slowly.

"I'm a doctor, not a chef. Don't knock it till you try it."

"You're probably the kind of godless heathen that eats cereal right out of the box without any milk, too."

"Only if it's the kind with little marshmallows in it. Don't even talk to me about weird food, last week I saw you dipping dog biscuits in chocolate syrup." Leonard shoved the last of the buttered brownie in his mouth.

"Pike just took us both out of classes, by the way."

" _What?"_  Jim dropped his brownie back onto his paper plate, gaping at him. "We have exams!"

"Not anymore, we don't." Leonard took advantage of Jim's momentary distraction to lean over and smear a glob of butter onto the brownie he'd dropped. "He's exempted us, and we're not to show our faces on campus until after the holiday break."

"Fucking, fuck man."

"Language, whipper-snapper."

"And it wasn't dog biscuits, it was graham crackers just  _shaped_  like dog biscuits. You should appreciate that I watch my fiber intake."

"Chocolate covered fiber doesn't count."

Jim scowled, snatched up his brownie without looking and crammed the whole thing in his mouth. Leonard watched, unimpressed, as the blonde realized his mistake and flailed around dramatically while making awful wheezing sounds that sounded suspiciously like "motherfucker."

"It's fucking delicious, don't be a wuss."

"I hate you."

Leonard's PADD dinged and he looked down, half expecting Winona Kirk again. Instead it was Pike's text reply.

_I'll get you a series of private flight sims scheduled and he can spend the break helping you overcome that little problem of yours. That ought to keep him entertained._

Oh, just damn it all. He resisted the urge to punch the PADD.

Jim had recovered from his buttery trauma and was scarfing down another slice of pizza enthusiastically. Leonard was pleased by that, considering the weekend they'd had, and also by the tricorder scan he'd taken earlier in the evening. Oxygen levels up, iron levels up, strong heart rhythm, everything within normal ranges. The soreness would probably continue for some time, but it wasn't at a level that Leonard would be tempted to prescribe more than an aspirin for. Since Jim probably couldn't safely take an aspirin, it was best to just let it sort itself out.

Speaking of, Leonard reminded himself, he'd have to get Jim's list of allergies memorized soon if he were going to be his primary physician. He'd also have to talk the kid into a full physical, which he apparently hadn't had done in years, and get started on those Cal-6 shots. They were scheduled to meet with Phillip Boyce in the morning so Leonard could get a second opinion on Jim's recovery. That would be a good time to do the first one since they'd been taken out of class, so Jim could come back and rest afterward.

Thing was, Leonard was reluctant to bring it up at the moment, but also didn't want to spring it on him first thing in the morning. Right now Jim was eating, and relaxed, and he didn't want to do anything to change that. If Leonard brought up the bone density problem, he would also be bringing up Tarsus IV, and he suspected that would kill any desire for food. Best to let them finish dinner and get settled before talking about it. He made a mental note to ask him when was the last time he'd seen an optometrist, because he'd noted a certain squintiness when Jim read late at night and an allergy to Retinax-D on his chart.

They watched the holonet and kept eating pizza until Leonard thought he was going to barf, and Jim started to look droopy. Leonard was brainstorming while he nudged the kid toward bed and cleaned up the pizza boxes, and finally fired off a text comm to Pike before going to brush his teeth.

_What if I make us disappear into the Deep South until New Year's?_

It wasn't a bad plan. They could get a shuttle in the morning and spend the holiday south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a hotel room, eating pecan pies and watching old movies until it was time to start classes again. Jim was less likely to be recognized there than here in what was practically Starfleet Central, plus it would be relaxing for both of them. Jim could waste time playing games on his PADD or reading whatever bullshit astrophysics crap he wanted, and Leonard could have time to talk to him about the Cal-6 injections in a non-threatening atmosphere.

(And it would get Leonard out of those flight sims.)

He checked in on Jim, who was crashed out on his bed in a food coma, completely dead to the world. Definitely a good sign, falling asleep in his own bed and sleeping deeply. Then he double checked the locks on the windows and doors, double checked that the curtains were still shut, and turned on the security feed on the terminal. His PADD dinged at him as he was climbing into his pajamas.

_That could work, but you're still doing those sims. Let me know when you're leaving._

Leonard decided that he didn't like Pike all that much after all.

_We'll catch a shuttle to Nashville after Jim's checkup in the morning. Probably be there by noon, I'll give you a buzz when we get where we're going._

He clambered into bed, wondering what Jim would think about the unplanned vacation. He probably wouldn't mind, and Leonard could find them plenty of things to do. They could have a few days of downtime in the Smokies, then head further south and hit the Historic Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Jim would  _love_  that shit. Then they could drive from there to Gulf Shores and spend New Year's at the beach. A shuttle could have them back at the Academy in a couple of hours, and he could start flight sims in the last few days before classes began.

He'd known he'd have to do the sims, one way or the other. But with his qualifications he was a shoo-in for any number of ground postings, so chances were he'd never actually have to spend a significant amount of time in space. He'd been totally smashed when he got on the shuttle to the Academy, or he'd have taken a handful of tranquilizers before boarding. As it was, he'd have to grab a few things from medical in the morning before they left: a Cal-6 shot, in case he could talk Jim into it over the break; a tranq hypo or two, for the shuttle rides; a handful of epi-pens, in case there was an incident. He'd take along his own medkit, of course, his PADD, some clothes.

Leonard was drifting in that soft place between waking and sleeping when his PADD started blipping at him urgently. Muttering curses, he threw off the covers and grabbed the device from the bedside table. The screen glowed automatically in the darkness, displaying a message from the CMO of the USS  _Columbia._

_CC: Pike, Christopher; McCoy, Leonard_

_From: Tkrit, Scalia_

_Commander Winona Kirk's psychiatric evaluation was completed at 0700 on the current stardate. The results indicate that she is of sound mind, however, based on copies of recent communications that she sent to Captain Pike (who then forwarded them to me) I have ordered her to see the ship's counselor weekly until further notice. Her attitude toward Pike indicates a serious problem that needs to be resolved. I have pulled all her comm records for the last six months and will be forwarding them to the ship's counselor immediately._

About damn time. Now the  _Columbia's_  counselor would see the crazy shit she wrote to her son and maybe get a clue. He would prefer that she start with antidepressants at the outset, but she wasn't his patient. It wouldn't surprise him at all if she'd faked her way through psych evals for years; if she was even half as sharp as Jim she'd have learned the answers the shrinks wanted to hear pretty quickly. As long as she was doing her job, there wasn't a lot of evidence to indicate that she was unbalanced at all. Lots of women weren't particularly nurturing mothers, although the majority of less-than-stellar mothers couldn't hold a candle to the way Winona had treated Jim.

And what about the other Kirk kid, Sam? Jim had never mentioned him, not once. Pike said he'd disappeared without a trace, but that was difficult to do these days unless you actually left the planet. There were plenty of places out in the black to get lost in, if you didn't want to be found. But how did a fifteen year old get out of Earth's atmosphere without a parent's signature? Or did he find a shady doctor to change his retinal patterns and fingerprints, assume a new identity? Could he be tracked down, and if so, would Jim even want to see him?

Crap, he was wide awake now. Oh well, if he took enough tranqs he be able to nap on the shuttle in the morning. He got up and started quietly packing a bag with jeans, sweaters, his PADD, a few other things. A movement in the doorway caught his attention, and he turned to find a sheepish Jim standing there. He'd locked it open so he'd hear if Jim needed him during the night, and wasn't surprised that he hadn't managed more than a few hours of sleep. They had napped on and off all day. The kid eyed Leonard's duffel bag.

"Going somewhere, Bones?"

"Surprise vacation, to Tennessee." Leonard zipped it shut and tossed it down at the foot of the bed.

"Oh." Jim shuffled a little, looking at the ceiling. "Need help packing?"

"Nope, I'm packed."

"Okay."

He turned to go back to his room, looking dejected, and Leonard took pity on the poor uninformed bastard.

"You should pack your bag too," he called, "and be ready to go after your appointment in the morning."

Jim reappeared. "Huh?"

"Pack a bag, you need some clothes and a PADD and your comm. We're going to be in Nashville around lunchtime."

"Oh."

"Oh? You don't sound enthusiastic. Would you rather stay here?"

"I'll pack."

Jim flittered back through to his room and began tossing stuff in a bag. Leonard heaved a sigh, grabbed the blanket from his bed, and dragged it to the recliner in the living room. He had a feeling neither of them would get back to sleep if he didn't. Jim would be up all night, and Leonard would be obliged to stay up and harass him about his sleeping habits. He listened to Jim's movements for a few more minutes before the kid turned up again, heading for the replicator.

"No coffee, you hyperactive mutt."

Jim froze in place, not having noticed Leonard.

"Come over here, we're going to sleep until it's time to go to your appointment, and then we can get a nap on the shuttle."

"Um." Jim approached the recliner, color rising in his face.

"Don't be stupid, there's nobody gonna see you."

They got settled awkwardly, finally pulling up the blankets and calling the lights down. Jim fidgeted for a while, but the rocking soothed him back to sleep and Leonard drifted off while making a mental list of places to eat in Gatlinburg.


End file.
